What Is Fixed Odds Betting?

When it comes to sports betting, there’s no shortage of terminology surrounding the industry, ranging from the obvious to what is frankly plain weird (‘jolly’? ‘nap’? ‘vigorish’?).

‘Fixed odds betting’ is one of those terms that makes a pretty straightforward concept sound much more complicated than it is - but there are some important fine details to it, and we’ll cover all of them in this article.

What Is Fixed Odds Betting?

Fixed odds betting means a bet where you know the odds when you place your bet, and that they will not change once you’ve done so.

Fixed odds betting is also known as ‘traditional’ sports betting, and the majority of sports betting is done this way. It offers some clear advantages, in that you know exactly how much you stand to win when you place your bet (and exactly how much you stand to lose).

It’s worth noting that fixed odds betting doesn’t mean that the odds on an event don’t ever change at all at the bookie’s end. Bookies update their odds all the time - sometimes, annoyingly, while you’re partway through placing a bet - as the market moves and the likelihood of each outcome shifts. However, once your bet has been accepted by the bookie, the odds are fixed (with just a couple of exceptions, which we’ll come to later).

For clarity’s sake, we should also point out that ‘fixed’ here means ‘unchanging’ - and has nothing at all to do with match-fixing. People are often highly suspicious of bookies, sure that they must be up to something nefarious. Although there are certainly legitimate questions to be asked about bookmaker ethics, there’s no reason to think that a bookie with a UK gambling licence would be foolish enough to engage in match-fixing. You can be confident that there’s nothing dodgy about fixed odds betting.

Isn’t All Sports Betting Fixed Odds Betting?

It’s quite possible, even if you’re a frequent casual bettor, that you’ve never placed a bet that wasn’t fixed odds. The vast majority of bets people place in the UK are at fixed odds, and it’s what most people think of when they talk about sports betting.

But it’s by no means the only type of betting around, even if it does occupy the largest volume of betting in the UK. Other forms of betting are increasingly gaining popularity, such as spread betting and pool betting. The amounts you stand to win from other forms of betting can vary - sometimes drastically - but for some people this only adds to the excitement. We’ll dive into the main forms of non-fixed odds betting below.

Spread Betting

Spread betting is comparatively new in the UK, having got going in the 1980s. In spread betting the degree of accuracy of your bet determines your winnings - or your losses.

For each market, a bookie will offer a particular ‘spread’ - a prediction of what the outcome will be. The customer then bets on whether the outcome will be higher or lower than the spread, and their winnings or losses depend on the accuracy of that bet.

For example, a spread betting bookie might offer a Total Goals market with a spread of 2.9 - 3.1 goals. If you expect the total number of goals to be higher than 3, you can buy at 3.1 - or if you think it’ll be lower than 3, you can sell at 2.9.

Your profits or losses are determined by the difference between the spread and the outcome. So, if you bet £10 at 3.1, and there were a total of 5 goals in the match, you’d win £19 (1.9, the difference between 3.1 and 5, x 10). If there were two goals in the game, meanwhile, you would lose £11 (1.1 x 10).

This means that you have the potential for significant winnings - but also for significant losses, which can be greater than your original stake. If you decide to try out spread betting, make sure to carefully work out your potential losses and adjust your stake accordingly, so that you never end up losing more than you expect.

Pool Betting (Tote Betting)

Pool betting is dominated by Tote Betting in the UK, so the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. In pool betting, all bettors on a particular event (usually a race) contribute to a pool of money, which is then divided between those whose bets were successful (after the bookie’s cut has been taken). This means that you can’t be sure how much you stand to make until all bets have been taken and the pool has closed - though it does often work out quite similarly to fixed odds betting.

This type of betting is also known as parimutuel betting, and goes back over 150 years to 1867, when it was invented by a Frenchman named Joseph Oller, who also co-founded the Moulin Rouge cabaret. It’s especially popular in horse and greyhound racing, partly because it’s a common exception to legislation banning gambling in some countries.

Starting Price (SP)

In horse racing, the starting price is the official odds for a particular horse at the beginning of a race. This is determined by taking a rough average of the odds available across the major bookies in the UK at that point.

When betting on a horse in advance of a race, you can choose whether to bet at the prevailing odds at the time or at the SP - but you won’t of course yet know what the SP will be. You might decide to bet on the SP if you expect a horse’s odds to improve as the race grows nearer, accepting the risk that the odds could actually decrease.

Many bookies offer ‘Best Odds Guaranteed’ (BOG), however, which means that, if the SP is higher than the odds you bet at in advance of a race, your winnings will be based on the SP regardless. Not all bookies offer BOG on every race, though, so it’s best to double check before placing any bets, if you’re hoping to take advantage of this offer.

What Type Of Betting Is Best For Matched Betting?

If you’re a matched bettor, it’s definitely simplest to stick to fixed odds betting. Fundamentally, Matched Betting relies on finding close odds matches between a bookie and a lay exchange - which is impossible to do if you don’t know those odds at the time you place your bet.

For this reason, the vast majority of Matched Betting opportunities you come across will be for fixed odds betting. However, you do occasionally get offers that include an element of non-fixed odds betting. Tote Betting, for example, have both a regular fixed odds section and a Tote betting section, and you may occasionally end up completing offers involving tote betting if you’re a regular matched bettor. Fortunately, our guides steer you through the best way to maximise profits from such offers, so you needn’t worry about getting mixed up.

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Are There Any Exceptions To Fixed Odds Betting?

They’re fairly unusual, and they don’t tend to be of significant value, but there can be occasional exceptions to the fixed aspect of fixed odds betting.

Void bets

In the event of a team or player not competing (or a match not taking place at all), a bet will usually be void. This means that your original stake will be returned to you, as if your bet had never taken place.

Void bets are most common in horse racing, where horses may be pulled from races with some regularity. If your horse is what’s known as a non-runner, you’ll get a straightforward refund of your bet.

Rule 4 deductions

Rule 4 deductions are a secondary consequence of a horse being pulled from a race. When this happens, naturally this has a knock-on effect on the chances of all the other horses winning. To counter this, a small deduction is made from all winnings under what’s known as Rule 4, which determines the amount deducted.

Best odds guaranteed (BOG)

As we’ve covered above, when BOG is offered by a bookie, it means that a bet will be honoured at the SP at the beginning of a race, even if that bet had been placed at lower odds. This is, of course, entirely to the bettor’s advantage, as they can only gain any profit as a result - but it does still count as an exception to the fixed odds rule.

Summary

The vast majority of sports betting in the UK is fixed odds - and if you’re a casual gambler, you may only ever place fixed odds bets. However, there are other types of betting available, and spread betting in particular has gained popularity in recent years.

Although there can be occasional exceptions to fixed odds bets, it’s still a more ‘secure’ way to gamble then spread betting or pool betting, where you can’t be sure of how much you stand to win (or, in the case of spread betting, lose) when you place your bet. Still, the safest and most profitable option of all is Matched Betting, which removes the element of risk altogether, allowing you to make guaranteed profits.