When you’re new to betting seeing things like Over 2.25 goals and Under 1.75 goals can scare the daylights out of you. How can there be quarter and three quarter goals? And then there’s half goals, with Over/Under 2.5 goals as well.

Well, we’re here to help you learn more about these markets. Since being introduced to European bookmakers these markets are becoming more popular. Goal markets are now bigger than the Home/Draw/Away markets because the good thing about the Over/Under bets is that we only have two results, you either win or you don’t, unlike with the Home/Draw/Away market where we have just one opportunity to win and two to lose. It’s because of this that these markets are becoming more and more popular.

Some bookies still don’t offer these markets, especially high street bookies. We’re spoken in a previous article (Click here) about the differences between ‘hard books’ and ‘soft books’. Basically ‘hard books’ are the big boys like SBOBet, Pinnacle etc., the soft books are the ones on high streets you’ll find all over most European countries. Hard books ‘charge’ a smaller commission on bets, while soft books charge far more. For example, it’s common that SBObet will make 2-3% commission per wager, the European softbooks are more likely to make 6-8% per wager placed with them. Why is this, well, the Asian bookies have far, far larger customer pools and thus can ‘charge’ their customers less and still make a healthy profit.

Over/Under Goal Line Betting

With an Asian Goal line like Over/Under 2.75 goals or an Asian Handicap line of +/-0.5 or +/-1.25 the hardbooks ‘charge’ less commission because they know that the market will dictate the price. We’re written previously about Asian Handicaps , there’s a handy graphic with it too, so feel free to bookmark it and keep it on hand. European soft books prefer to have more control over their profit margins and will instead offer prices to ensure that they continue to make their desired profit per market. Basically what we’re saying here is you really should look into getting an account with a hard book as you’ll get better bang for your buck.

Anyway, let’s get back to the goal lines, just like with our article about Asian Handicaps, we’ve made a guide for you to bookmark so you can have something handy to check what you need to happen in a match for your Over/Under bet to win.