There are a long list of football offers available throughout the season, including early payout offers and refund offers. However, it can often be difficult to decide how best to capitalise on them. One option is to back an outcome at a bookmaker and then lay on an exchange to try and trigger the offer. However, if the odds are right, we can also dutch matches between the bookmakers that have offers, with the possibility of qualifying for multiple offers whilst keeping any qualifying loss as low as possible.
Dutching is a term used to describe covering every outcome on the same event. Broadly speaking, there are two types of dutching: Each Way Dutching (EWD) and Win Only Dutching (WOD). In horse racing when odds are favourable for a particular race, EWD can be used to make large profits when an outsider wins. Profit Squad provides software that highlights the races with enough value for this strategy, as well as training and software that shows us how much money should be placed on each horse.
Win Only Dutching is often overlooked but it can be used for a variety of sports in an attempt to trigger offers and generate profits. A good example of this is for football where there are often several offers available on a particular match.
Types of football offers
Early payout offers (2-ups)
Bet365 and PaddyPower have this offer running on certain leagues and competitions in Europe. Simply put, if a team leads by 2 goals at any point in the match, they pay out straight away. This means that if the team that was leading by 2 goals go on to draw or lose the match, our bet will still be paid as a winner.
William Hill Golden Goal
More recently, William Hill have been running their golden goal offer for a selected game each week. With this offer, if the team you back scores first but goes on to draw or lose the match our winnings will still be paid out up to £50.
Refund offers
There are also a high number of refund offers from other bookmakers. Whilst sometimes they may be difficult to trigger, they are often worthwhile incorporating into a football dutch, especially if one of the bookmakers has preferable odds. Common offers include refunds if your team are winning at Half-time but lose the match, refunds for bore draws (0-0), refunds for a penalty being scored, refunds for a goal being scored past ‘x’ minute causing your bet to lose and more.
How do we capitalise on these offers?
If we look at offers individually, we could look to back with the bookmaker and lay the same result on an exchange in an attempt to trigger the offer.
2up- Back and Lay
For example, West Ham are playing Everton in the Premier League:
- We bet £100 on Everton at odds of 2.85 on Bet365 in an attempt to trigger the 2 up offer
- We can use the matched betting calculator to see how much we should lay on the exchange at odds of 2.90
- We lay £98.96 on Everton on Smarkets
- If Everton go 2 up in the game but go on to draw or lose the match, we will be paid out on Bet365 and the exchange giving us £281.98 profit (£185 + £96.98).
- If the 2 up offer is not triggered, we make a qualifying loss of £3.02
Golden Goal- Back and lay
- Similarly, we could bet on West Ham in an attempt to trigger the Golden Goal offer at odds of 2.5 on William Hill.
- As their offer has a winnings cap of £50, we only bet £35.
- We then lay £34.58 on West Ham at odds of 2.64 at the exchange.
- If West ham score the first goal but go on to draw or lose the match, we will be paid out £33.89 on the exchange but also paid out £50 on William Hill for their Golden Goal offer giving us a profit of £83.89.
- If William Hill’s golden goal offer is not triggered, we make a £1.10 loss
This would give a combined qualifying loss of £4.12 for both offers but a potential max profit of £365.87 if both offers are triggered.
Dutching
We could also use the dutching calculator to see if we can lower the overall qualifying loss whilst still having a shot at triggering both offers.
We use the same odds as above for West Ham and Everton on Bet365 and William Hill. Additionally, we use draw odds of 3.6 on 7bestbets so that all match outcomes are covered. We enter our desired overall stake so that our potential profit is similar to above and the calculator does the rest of the work, telling us how much to stake on each team.
Here we can see our total overall qualifying loss is slightly higher (between £8.35-£9.40 depending on the outcome).
However, we also have the potential to qualify for a third offer through 7best bets, who have a refund offer if a goal is scored in the 80th+ minute causing your bet to lose and have the added bonus of not having any liability tied up in an exchange.
Which option should we use?
In the above example, if we chose to back and lay for one chance at the 2 up offer, we have a reasonable qualifying loss. Additionally, in order to achieve a similar potential profit when dutching, our qualifying loss is slightly higher, although this is negated by the potential of triggering the refund offer.
An alternative would be to dutch the match to have a higher chance of hitting a 2up. In the dutching example above, the majority of our stake is wasted since William Hill has a £50 winnings cap. Therefore, we could use PaddyPower for West Ham, also at odds of 2.5. In this scenario, we would have the same qualifying losses as above but would have two chances of triggering the 2up offer. If either West Ham or Everton go 2 goals up but draw or lose the match, we can get paid out twice for the same bet. We can then back and lay separately for the William Hill offer. This way we qualify for 3 offers with both teams covered for a 2up chance.
- If either West Ham or Everton go 2 goals up but fail to win the match, we will be paid out twice giving a profit of approximately £300.
- If a goal in the 80th+ minute causes our draw bet on 7betbets to lose we will receive a refund of £20.
- If West Ham score first but draw/lose the match we make a profit of around £83.
Although unlikely, it is also possible that we qualify for all 3 of these offers. Instead of backing and laying for the WH offer, we could also carry out a second dutch with other bookmakers in an attempt to trigger even more offers.
Summary
Dutching football games is only beneficial if the odds are high enough at the right bookmakers for a particular game. Similarly, backing and laying is only worthwhile if the bookmaker and exchange odds are close enough. Historically teams in the premier league only throw away a 2-goal lead approximately 4% of the time. Therefore, we would be looking for qualifying loses of no more than around 3% to make it worthwhile. However, when dutching we can sometimes add more value as we have the possibility to qualify for more offers or increase our chances of qualifying for the same offer.
