Betting Odds Explained

Before you embark on your sports betting journey, it’s vital you fully understand betting odds.

Whether you’re crafting the perfect bet builder or weighing up the futures markets, making sure you have a grasp of betting odds explained is paramount.

How Betting Odds Work

Betting odds show the likelihood of an outcome in a sporting event. Punters can work out (or use a betting calculator) the implied probability once they have the odds from a bookmaker. 

It is also possible to calculate the potential winnings from a wager. For instance, if Manchester United are 5/1 to beat Manchester City, and you wager £10 on United, you would win £50 with a total return of £60. 

A market priced at 5/1 carries an implied probability of 16.7%. To work out if a bet has value, the implied probability needs to be lower than what you project the likelihood of the outcome to be.

Before delving into the betting pages at 888Sport, it’s crucial you understand these terms: 

  • Stake – this is the amount you decide to wager on your bet.

  • Odds – this is the ‘price’ you agree to stake your bet at.

  • Payout – this shows the expected return on your bet, if you are successful.

Betting Odds and Probability

Probability and betting odds are intrinsically tied, as noted above.

The shorter the odds on an outcome, the more likely the bookie believes it is to happen.

So, if Harry Kane is 4/5 to score anytime and Erling Haaland is 6/5 to score anytime, the bookie believes it is more likely Kane scores in the match than Haaland. 

Some bettors will have their own projection systems to try and identify where the betting value is. Where events like a dice roll or coin flip have a set probability for each ‘event’, sports are much more fluid.

Betting on sports is all about navigating probabilities and the chance of an outcome.

Long odds don’t mean that an outcome will not happen – Leicester City winning the 2015-16 Premier League title having been 5000/1 outsiders is the ultimate example of this.

Equally, an outcome being odds-on (meaning an implied probability above 50%) doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to happen. Manchester City were massive favourites over Wigan Athletic in the 2013 FA Cup final, for instance. 

Ultimately, odds are how bookmakers communicate with bettors about the likelihood of a given outcome. Punters can use odds to calculate their potential winnings.

Bookmakers can present their odds in one of three ways: fractional e.g. 2/1, decimal e.g. 3.00 or American e.g. +200.