Football’s all about goals but correctly predicting how many will be scored in a game is tricky. Only a few times a season will you hear someone say “well that was a good 0-0 draw”.
Here at Paddy Power we love goals as much as our punters, which is why we offer over/under odds on every single football match in our book.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re betting on the Premier League or following mid-season friendlies in Asia, goals will always be the big thing to bet on.
But how does over and under goals betting work? If you’re unsure about this, and why 2.5 seems to be the magic line, then read on!
Our guide will explain how the market works, what the likelihood is of a game featuring + or – 2.5 goals, and some tips when live betting on football.
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What is over/under 2.5 goals?
Over/under 2.5 goals is a bet option in football that specifically focuses on the best part of the game: goals. As a bettor, your task is to predict whether a game, a team, or a player will score more or fewer than 2.5 goals.
Usually the focus is on the game as a whole, or a team. You could, for example, bet on a match between England and Germany to feature +2.5 goals. Or you may back Germany to score -2.5 goals.
You can also focus on players. For example, betting on Harry Kane to score over 2.5 goals in an international match against Belgium.
The reason the number is split at 2.5 is to avoid confusion when betting. For example, you can only score above or below 2.5 goals, but you can score above, below and exactly 2 goals.
HOW DOES THE OVER/UNDER 2.5 GOALS MARKET WORK?
You may see this market displayed as +/- 2.5 goals but the principle is just the same. The market works by offering odds on a totals line. The line is set wherever you like, and for most people it’s 2.5.
Bet below 2.5 and if none, one or two goals are scored, then you win your bet. Bet above the line and you’ll need three goals to win.
OVER 2.5 GOALS PROBABILITY
You can work out the probability of over or under 2.5 goals being scored by crunching some numbers. The best way is to get into the stats and see what the average number of goals scored is. Now, you could focus on:
- Average goals scored per game in the league or tournament in question
- Average goals scored per game for a specific team
- Average goals scored and conceded per game for both teams playing
- Average goals scored in head-to-heads between the two teams
- Average goals a player has scored per game this season
- Average goals a player has scored against this opponent
There are obviously a lot of options here and the deeper you dig, the more accurate your predictions may turn out to be.
For example, there were 1,246 goals scored in the 2023/24 Premier League season, at 3.28 goals per match. Digging a bit deeper, we can see that 244 of the 380 games played featured +2.5 goals.
Therefore, we can determine that:
- 36% of games feature under 2.5 goals
- 64% of games feature over 2.5 goals
This would suggest you bet on +2.5 goals each time you bet on the Premier League.
However, dig into individual teams and there’s a big change here. Thirty of Tottenham’s 38 Premier League games in 2023/24 featured three or more goals (79%). As for Everton, that happened just 16 times (42%).
OVER/UNDER 2.5 GOALS tips
When it comes to creating a betting strategy around goals, then, it’s important to work out what you want to focus on. If you’re happy knowing that Premier League games feature +2.5 goals roughly two-thirds of the time then you may decide to bet the same stake on each game, every time, and assume you’ll lock in profit.
If you’re following a specific team, you may do the same thing and choose to place the same bet every time, confident that you’ll make profit over the course of the season.
However, once you dig deeper into the stats you may want to fine-tune your stakes and be more selective with your picks. Here are some tips to help you:
- Look at team evenness – Generally speaking, evenly-matched teams tend to produce fewer goals in games. Yes, you might get a 4-3 thriller but it’s more likely that you’ll witness fewer than two goals. You can use head to head records to help you determine which teams are evenly matched, as well as table position and recent form.
- Look at context – Does a team need to avoid losing by three goals to progress to the next stage of a knockout competition? If they carry a 3-0 lead from the first leg then they may set about defending more in the second and grind out the result. This may, therefore, favour -2.5 goals.
- Look beyond 2.5 – Paddy Power over/unders on goals that go way beyond 2.5. The odds might be better, for example, to back +4.5 goals in an FA Cup game between Chelsea and Tranmere. Or, if there’s a big derby game that you reckon will be tight, you might want to bet on -1.5 goals.
No matter your pick, you can find what you need at Paddy Power. You’ll see all the over/under odds for any game when you head to our football betting page!
OVER/UNDER 2.5 GOALS live betting
You can also bet on total goals during games and take advantage of rapidly fluctuating odds. Paddy Power uses algorithms and data from Opta to determine the correct likelihood of more goals being scored midway through games.
This means you can follow the changing odds and time your bet to perfection. As you can see here, some markets aren’t always available. This example is taken from a Euro 2024 game where Ukraine were leading Slovakia 2-1 with eight minutes remaining. It’s practically guaranteed that there will be -6.5 goals, so the market is closed.
However, you can bet on over/under 3.5 goals as Slovakia seek a late leveller.
Live goals totals odds can flip in an instant when a goal is scored, depending on who scores it. If a team leading 2-0 with 15 minutes left add a third, then it’s likely the game will peter out 3-0.
However, if a team is 2-0 down early in the game but halve the deficit on the 29th minute for 2-1 then it’s likely we’ll see another goal before full time!
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