Far and away the most popular and straightforward football betting market is the pre-match three-way, or 1-X-2, market, in which punters are required to predict a home win, away win or draw over 90 minutes plus stoppage time. However, the match result market is just one of a plethora of football betting markets, many of which can yield a profit regardless of the final result.
One such market involves backing a team to score two or more goals in a match and this is the market that was exploited, in audacious style, by an anonymous Sky Bet punter in March, 2019. The unidentified bettor staked £10 on a ten-fold accumulator on teams in League One, League Two and the National League and, eventually, collected £52,323.17 for his efforts.
In League One, his three selections included Blackpool, who scored two goals, but only thanks to Southend United defender Taylor Moore putting through his own goal in the sixth minute of injury time. Home wins for Bradford over Peterborough and Rochdale over Shrewsbury Town were more straightforward, as were those for Cheltenham Town, Colchester and Crawley in League Two. In the National League, three more home wins, for Barrow, Hartlepool and Maidstone, made it nine winning selections out of ten and, although Chesterfield lost at home to Eastleigh, they did so by a scoreline of 2-3, thereby completing the ten-fold.