One of the most lucrative forms of football betting has to be that of the football coupon. It’s a bet that’s been around in some form for decades now but first started back in 1923 when it was known as The Pools. In fact, you can still place very similar bets even today, more of which we talk about later in the article.
The attraction of football coupons are the massive rewards for very little outlay. You can place a bet with just a couple of pounds and win hundreds, if not thousands with some bets. It’s high variance betting at its finest, but it’s also a bet that a lot of people can relate and have access to.
If you are familiar with high street betting, then it’s likely that you are aware of the football coupons that you can get on a daily basis. Well, the same can be applied to the online sector, except the range of coupons that you can get online compared to the high street is huge.
What are Coupons and How do They Work?
For those that don’t know, a coupon is basically a long list of games and results that you can choose from. They often cover games from several leagues that are based all over the world and can contain upwards of 50 games.
As a punter you need to select a number of games from the coupon to create what is essentially an accumulator bet. The more games that you pick, the higher the odds, but also the greater the risk.
Football coupons can be set as fixed price, or they can go off the current price for that bet. For example, a popular online coupon these days is that of Goals Galore, which is published by Betfred. The bookmaker provides a huge list of games each day and the punter selects whether both teams will score in that game or not.
The odds for the selections are fixed and the more you add the more your fixed price increases. So, 3 games might be 3.00, 4 games might be 5.00, 6 games might be 10.00, and so on.
Other coupons might have flexible prices, and these tend to be match result coupons more often than not. With these you are able to choose either home win, away win, or draw. Each result will be priced in the morning, and then your coupon will be made into was is essentially an accumulator depending on the results you include.
Either way, it’s worth remembering that for all coupons you need to get every selection correct. If you lose just one of the picks then the whole bet loses. This is why they are an exciting bet but also one that can be hard to call given that football can be so unpredictable.
Types of Online Coupons Available
The number of different types of coupons that you can now find online is vast. There was a time when it was just one or two pretty basic options to choose from, but that’s not the case today. Here is a list of some of the more popular football coupons.
The Pools
The Pools is the oldest form of football coupon and as mentioned earlier, it has been running since 1923. The format used to work by being posted out to people and then returned, before door to door salespeople started collecting the bets, but these days you can just play it online.
There aren’t an awful lot of ways that you can play The Pools aside from via the actual website, but there are plenty of variations that are pretty much the same, just branded slightly differently.
For this you will have a sheet of 49 games to choose from. If you are in the UK, then these games are usually a mix of English and Scottish football leagues. They tend to be most popular on a Saturday when there are a larger number of games to choose from, but as you can now play them online you can get them pretty much every day.
From the 49 games, you then need to pick 10 that you think will end as a score draw. When the games have finished you get points for how close you were to the correct result. The points are as follows:
- 3 points for a correct score draw
- 2 points for a no score draw
- 1 point for a home or away win
From this, your 8 best scores are taken and then the points added together. If you score 22, 23 or 24 points overall then you will likely be up for a cash prize. However, if you get 9 correct score draws from your 10 picks then you will be eligible to win the jackpot, which is often over £1million. Cash prizes are divided based on the amount in the pot and the number of winners.
Goals Galore
The Goals Galore coupon was probably the biggest resurgence of these types of bets within the online sector. The concept was thought up by Fred Done of Betfred fame, and it has been a massive success.
As with all coupons you get a long list of games to choose from and you can select as many games as you like in which you think both teams will score. The result is irrelevant – all you need is goal from both teams for a winning selection.
This is a fixed price coupon and as you increase the number of selections, the odds of your bet go up.
There are two lists that you can choose from; the long list and the bonus list. The long list is the standard goals galore list and comes with standard odds. The bonus list offers a slightly different range of games to choose from, but the odds are higher.
For example, 3 picks on the long list return 3/1 whereas with the bonus they return 9/2. 4 picks on the long list return 11/2, but on the bonus they return 9/1.
It may seem obvious to choose from the bonus list as some of the games are on both, but they remove the games that are most likely to see both teams score from the bonus list, which makes it harder to call. Either way, as you move up to the maximum of 10 selections, you will be paid 120/1 on the Long List and 300/1 on the Bonus List.
Football Jackpot (Coral)
Coral have been one of the leading forces in the revival of football coupons over the last few years, and their most popular offering has been that of their football jackpot.
The jackpot is where you have a list of games to choose from that include home win, away win, and the draw. There are 15 games pre-selected by Coral that all take place on the same day, and you need to select the correct result in all of the games to win the jackpot. The jackpot is at least £100,000, so it’s well worth winning.
This coupon is a little different to most in that you are able to place bets with more lines if you want. So, this means that you can choose two or even all three results for some matches. The downside to this is that your stake will increase the more lines that you select. It does make sense to use this on games that are particularly tight though, to cover all bases.
Whilst we have mentioned Coral here, there are other bookies that offer a similar format to this, but Coral are probably the biggest and the best.
Odds on Coupon
Another popular coupon that’s sprung to life over the last over the last couple years is the odds-on coupon. This is pretty self-explanatory, but it shows a huge list of games for the coupon that are all priced at shorter than even money.
Odds on bets aren’t usually all that popular with a lot of punters as they offer little return, but they work great for coupon bets. This is because they are bets that are fairly likely to come in, and as a result your coupon has a great chance of winning. On their own they have little value, but combined they can make for some great bets.
For example, if you have 5 bets that are priced at 1.50, you can turn that bet into odds of 7.95, which is much better. Plus, when they are priced that short it means that they are bets that the bookmakers, who fully research every result, think have an exceptionally good chance of winning, so you are taking advantage of the bookies resources too.
Televised Coupons
The televised coupon is one that usually links with betting sites offering live streaming on their platform. The games on the coupon are those that are either being shown live on TV or those that are being streamed live on that bookmaker’s site.
These are really cool coupons to use as they allow you to watch the games real time, and this makes for a more exciting sweat waiting for the results to come in. Televised matches are often quite competitive as well, with bookmakers taking more money on these bets than regular matches that aren’t available to view.
These bets aren’t fixed price and will be reflective of the live price for that game. Due to being more competitive markets than most, they can offer huge value.
Same Game Multi Coupon
The same game multi coupon is where you are able and encouraged to choose two or more results from the same game. These can be a really interesting mix like the match result, number of corners, and a specific player to score, for example.
You will need to pay more money the more results that you choose, but often the games that are selected in this coupon are tough to call, so that works out pretty well.
These bets are often more conservative than most and you are able to use either fixed price or live price betting. If you choose more than one bet from a single game, then the bookmaker will automatically adjust your price to reflect this.
Other Coupons
There are now a huge range of other coupons that you can play and a lot of them are pretty self-explanatory. They often target either full leagues or betting markets and then you can make your pick from there.
The betting markets list is one that continues to grow and is likely going to be where a lot of people like to play. Here is an example of some markets that come with long coupons attached:
- Result and BTTS
- BTTS
- Handicap
- Double Chance
- Draw no bet
- Over/Under 1.5, 2.5, 3.5 + goals
- Asian handicap
It’s possible for bookies to create as many coupons as they like, but lots that are labelled as coupons are actually just lists of games that are ordered in a specific way. A traditionalist would say that the coupons come with fixed prizes and a fixed buy in for all results, with anything else being nothing but a glorified accumulator bet.
However, the fact is that you can basically create any coupon that you like. You can select the games you want to include, the markets you want to bet on and even the price that you want to take, which increases the more selections you choose. It’s also possible to get coupons that are linked to promotions, but as they come and go, there is little point in listing them within this article.
The coupon sector continues to grow so we can expect more innovation in this area, largely because the lure of the big cash prizes has been a winner for the industry for nearly 100 years now and shows no sign of slowing down.