What is Spread Betting in the UK and Why You Should Be Doing It Too?
Spread betting in the UK is getting popular day by day because of its tax-free winnings. Spread betting can avail you of winning in indices, shares, Forex pairs, commodities, and sports.
Even though spread betting in the UK is widely famous nowadays but there are some punters who back off from spread betting because they think it is too complex to understand. However, if you follow proper guidelines and understand the procedure to adhere to, you will win more amount in spread betting in the UK rather than any other type of betting.
- Best Odds Available
- Wide range of Betting Markets
- Super fast deposits & withdrawals
- Live streaming service
- Best Odds Available
- Wide range of Betting Markets
- Super fast deposits & withdrawals
- Live streaming service
- Odds above average
- Fair new customer bonus
- Outstanding football betting selection
- Odds above average
- Fair new customer bonus
- Outstanding football betting selection
- Over 40 sports depending on the season
- Far ahead in the odds comparison
- Unique long-term bet
- Over 40 sports depending on the season
- Far ahead in the odds comparison
- Unique long-term bet
When it comes to sports spread betting—this is the easiest. You do not need to fight over odds and numbers here. You can simply predict the outcome whether it will be above (buy) or below (sell) of the given score (spread). In simple words, you just need to predict a score regarding the spread.
Suppose, in a football match, the spread score range is from 2.2 to 3. If you think the score will be higher than this, then you would buy and if you think the score will lower, then you would sell. The winning will depend on the accuracy of your prediction. You need to set a stake for each score. That means, if you are right with every score—you will get your stake multiplied every time. Such as, in football, you can bet £10 for each goal.
Fixed Odds vs Spread Betting in the UK Sportsbooks
Spread betting in the UK offers a lot of perks to win! On the other hand, fixed odds totally depend on the calculation of your stakes.
Spread betting winning depends on your accuracy. You do not even need to predict the most accurate number to win. Instead, you just need to predict the probable winning score.
The better your prediction reaches higher/lower the score—the more you win. In contrast, the more it goes against your prediction—the more you lose.
How to Place a Bet in Spread Bet in the UK
Now after getting a brief understanding of spread betting in the UK you may have gained the confidence to bet. However, we would suggest taking some more time to understand the process because the loss could be the same in spread betting as fixed odds. However, The biggest advantage of spread betting is that here you will able to win without losing a single penny if your prediction is correct.
In order to try out spread betting in the UK, you need to understand three words precisely – pread, buying, and selling.
Buying is the higher predicted score than the given spread and selling is the lower predicted score than the given spread. Now the question is what is the spread?
Spread is the given prediction of the company regarding what might happen in a sports match or event. The company generally provides spread betting markets with specific buying and selling price. SportingIndex and SpreadEx are known to be the popular companies to provide spreads for spread betting in the UK.
The spread is defined as the difference between buying and selling prices. It varies depending on the sport and market you are planning to bet on. Even in football, the spread number is not determined only by the score but numbers of corners, 1st goal minute, and more.
In horse racing, the spread is given by determining the horses with lower odds or favorites. Also, other horse racing markets provide the spread of winning horse distance, time, and more.
In cricket, the spreads are endless. Spreads can be given for total sixes, boundaries, wickets, and more.
Buying Spread Bets in the UK
If you are new to sports betting, the best step would be to start spread betting in the UK with buying. Buying allows you to win more and lose less. When you are buying, it means you are predicting a higher score than the given spread. For example, in football, the total goal spread range is 2-2.2 and you are predicting 3 goals or more.
| OutComes | Difference to 2-2.2 | Profit/Loss |
| 0 goals | -2.2 | -£22 |
| 1 goal | -1.2 | -£12 |
| 2 goals | -0.2 | -£2 |
| 3 goals | +0.8 | £8 |
| 4 goals | +1.8 | £18 |
| 5 Goals | +2.8 | £28 |
| 6 Goals | +3.8 | £38 |
| 7 Goals | +4.8 | £48 |
As we said earlier, buying in spread betting in the UK has tons of benefits. A big one is that it allows you to know the maximum amount of loss.
Selling Spread Bets in the UK
Selling can be advantageous for spread betting in the UK because most people tend to take ‘buying spread’ as it is known to be more beneficial. However, players do not always score high and as a result, bettors end up losing sometimes. So, you need to focus on the statistics first. Performing research on the history of a particular team might be necessary.
After doing the necessary research, you need to decide which side you want to take. Whether other people take ‘buying’ or not— you need to stick to your potential research and statistics insights.
In selling spreads, risks are higher. So, it is also important to choose ‘selling’ after being completely sure of your decision. There is no such big difference between buying and selling spreads. In buying, you just predict the higher score to win and in selling, you predict the lower score to win as well.
Spread betting markets can be confusing enough. There are so many markets to bet—it may seem confusing. So, the best thing would be to choose a sport, with which you are already familiar. We all have a favourite sport that we understand better than anyone, so you can choose your favorite sport to bet.
Why You Should Be Doing Spread Betting in the UK
Every type of betting has its positive and negative aspects. Even though spread betting in the UK is considered one of the most lucrative betting activities but there are a few disadvantages that you need to know about in order to master the art of spread betting.
However, in spread betting, the pros are always greater than the cons. That is why you should be doing it too. Now let’s see below some of the selective pros with endless opportunities and after that, we will know about the cons too, so that you find the answer to your question, why I should be doing it too?
Pros
First of all, spread betting in the UK allows you to win more money if you are accurate. Unlike fixed odds, the opportunities are abundant in spread betting. You can spread bet on the multiple scoring features of a game, such as football. you can bet on the number of corners, goals, and more. When you make an accurate prediction about all of them –imagine—how much you will be winning with each score of the game.
Unique Betting Options
In spread betting, you get to know a new side of betting. Spread betting in the UK has a lot of markets available which offers a myriad of unique opportunities to win – the opportunities which you might not have seen yet. Once you become familiar with a spread betting type, then you will able to bet on different markets as well, which will effectively increase the betting expertise skills.
Massive Winnings
Another most amazing aspect of spread betting in the UK is that companies sometimes offer too high or too low spread. That is when the game becomes more lucrative, you end up winning a huge sum. Also, you need to remember that this does not always happen. The companies are very good at setting spreads too.
Lockable Profit
In spread betting, you will be able to lock your profit. While the event is going on—if you acknowledge a danger ahead you will able to lock the profit that you earned.
Live Betting Optimised
Spread betting in the UK allows you to bet on a live sports event. Yes, you can surely bet on live matches while spread betting. Also, during an event, you can change your mind and choose the opposite way in spread betting.
Betting on Tournaments
If you feel that spread betting does not give you enough time to make more money, then you can spread on the entire tournament instead. The benefit of spread betting on an entire tournament is that it gives you enough chance to reduce your losses and win more.
Betting on Individuals
You can spread bet on a specific player as well. In a horse race, football, or cricket match—you can join spread betting regarding an individual player depending on how the player would perform.
Cons
In every market, selling has risks. You might lose a huge amount while selling. So, analyzing the outcome beforehand is important.
Monetary Loss
You also may lose a huge sum if you do not limit your loss. So, before starting to spread betting in the UK, you need to be determined to set a range on how much amount you are ready to lose. Later you can also reverse the situation to adjust your stake accordingly.
Suitable Sports for Spread Betting in the UK
There are myriads sports markets available for spread betting in the UK. Most of them are different than fixed-odds betting. You may have been betting in the traditional way in a specific sport but that sport might not work the same when it comes to spread betting in the UK betting sites.
However, there are certain sports that are considered the best for spread betting, such as football, horse racing, cricket, darts, and more. At this point, we will go through the most beneficial ones to ensure your next spread bet successful.
- Odds above average
- Fair new customer bonus
- Outstanding football betting selection
Football Spread Betting
In football, there are countless opportunities available for spread bettors. From 200+ football markets, you will surely be able to find one according to your preference.
Some of the popular markets of football spread betting are total goals, shirt numbers, corners, team A/B, bookings, 1st match goal, 1st 2nd team goal, time of the first corner, headed goal minutes, and a lot more. Football is considered the best sport for sport betting in the UK, so we will go through all the details of football spread betting now.
How Football Spread Betting Works
We can easily claim that the most popular betting market for football spread betting in the UK is the number of total goals. Total goals betting means the number of goals that both of the teams will score in a match. So, if the given spread says three goals, then you can buy or sell according to your preference.
The second most popular market in Football spread betting in the UK is shirt numbers. You may not have heard about it but this is where the fun begins. In this market, goal-scorers and shirt numbers get combined. Suppose, in a match, there are 4 goals scored. If the shirt numbers of the goal scorers are 1,8,10, and 5, then the combined shirt number will be 24. This is what you will need to guess in the football shirt number betting market. The more accurate you are, the more you will win at end of the match.
Up next, we have goal minutes. It is a very easy market to understand but it might be a tough one for winning a great sum. This is mostly because, in a 90-minutes football match, the goal can be scored at any moment.
Let’s check out some football match outcomes to understand this market better.
- Team A-1, Team B-2: the first goal was scored by team A at 10th minute, 2nd and 3rd goal of the game was scored by Team B, one in 12th minutes and the other one in 58th Now the total outcome would be: 10+12+58= 80
- Team X-0, Team Y-1; the only goal was scored by Y at the 89th minute of the game. So the total outcome will be: 89
So, you need to guess this combined time of goals. The spread range of this betting market could be like this: 120-130 spread for 1-28 minutes 2-85 minutes, 3-255 minutes.
Cricket Spread Betting in the UK
During an international cricket event, you will find a lot of punters betting but a few of them will be spread betting because they don’t know about the benefits of spread betting in the UK.
As the cricket matches are long, you will have a lot of chances to win a big sum or recover your losses over time. Markets of cricket spread betting are numerous but most of the markets provide the options of spread betting based on runs, wickets, boundaries, sixes, wides, bowlers’ performance, half or full centuries, etc.
Runs
Punters make a prediction for the total runs of a team. For example, if Team A scored 255 runs and Team B lost all wickets at 200 runs, then the total runs will be 455. The more accurate your guesses are of these final 455 runs, the more cash prizes you will have. Furthermore, runs of a specific player or a team are also a part of the spread betting market in the UK.
Bowler Performance
When it comes to bowler performance, the most popular market is to predict the wicket-taking score of a particular player. If the given wicket-taking score of a bowler is 2, then can you predict 2, 3,4,5,6,7,8, and9 for buying and 1 and 0 for selling.
4s and 6s
Here, punters predict the number of boundaries/4s or the number of sixes in a game. If team A hits 18 boundaries and team B hits 12 boundaries, then the total score will be 30. Punters need to come closer/higher to ‘buy’ for spread betting in the UK.
Horse Racing in Spread Betting
There are a lot of ways available for horse racing spread betting in the UK including winning distances, favourites, jockey performance, double numbers, SP’s, match bets. Horse racing is already a thrilling sport to enjoy, and spread betting can make it more entertaining and enjoyable than ever.
In winning distance, the spread betting is determined by the length of the winning racehorse to the 2nd horse, or the 2nd to 3rd placed horse distances. All the ways of spread betting in Horse racing are determined and calculated by the ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ techniques.
Darts
Darts is becoming a popular sport for spread betting in the UK. For dart betting, there are some specific markets available, such as highest checkouts, total legs, total 180s, missed doubles, and more. All these markets work in typical spread betting rules; buying and selling.
Tips for Spread Betting in the UK
In this chapter we would like to list few tips for spread betting in UK.
Develop a trading plan beforehand
Having a trading plan in your head before spread betting in the UK will be beneficial in order to be a successor. The trading plan is like a business start-up plan which guides you in preparing ideas and helps you to see the bigger picture.
A trading plan in spread betting will map your capital and achievement and help you to develop ideas to achieve the opportunities in a better way.
Ignore the hype
While you are enjoying sports spread betting in the UK, it is easier to get distracted by the hype. Your entire country may support team A and even you are understanding that team A will definitely win but you will still need to see the statistics properly and check the track records of the team before making a decision.
This is because the failure of champions in a final match is not very uncommon. So, do not be biased and do not join the hype before doing proper research when you are trying sports betting.
Learn to control your risks
Spread betting in the UK is fun and financially effective but it is not impossible to lose all you have in spread betting. Putting a huge stake out of thin air can make you financially broke. To lower your risks, you can set up a credit limit that will drag you out automatically if you keep losing high amounts.
Best Offers
FAQ
How much can I win or lose with a sports spread bet in the UK? It totally depends on the sports match and the market you are choosing. For example, in football, the given spread corner number is 8. If you predict 12 or more and place a £10 wager for each corner after 8, then your £10 will be multiplied for each corner after that. If there were 15 corners in a match in total, then you will be winning £70.
Can I place A bet after an event has started? Yes, ‘in-play’ is available in almost all the sports spread betting markets in the UK. It has some advantages as well. ‘In-play’ bets allow you to get the primary idea of a sporting event score before betting. In this way, you can sometimes win more than you expected.
What are the most popular sports for spread betting in the UK? In the UK, spread betting on football, horse racing, tennis, cricket, and golf are the most popular ones. These sports have a huge audience and therefore, the UK betting platforms always provide special betting opportunities for them.
What are the risks involved in sports spread betting? It is said that in spread betting the opportunities are greater and risks are higher. This is because your losses and gains are totally uncapped here. Big wins can be gained from the small stake and vice versa. However, if you play spread betting sensibly, then you should not be worried—even if you lose, you will still be able to recover them in the foreseeable future.