THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCORING AND WINNING FOR BETS ON THE EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP

By Kevin Pullein

What is your wish for Euro 2024? Harry Kane to score for England in Germany, where he has scored so many goals for Bayern Munich?

Perhaps you will put a bet on. England to win and Kane to be top scorer. It will be a popular double.  As I write, the best odds for singles on those selections are 3-1 for England to win and 11-2 for Kane to be top scorer. Most other doubles at those odds would pay 25-1. A successful double on England and Kane will pay no more than 16-1.

Maybe you see things differently. Do you fancy goals for Kylian Mbappe and glory for France? The best odds for singles are 4-1 for France and 5-1 for Mbappe. Most other doubles at those odds would pay 29-1. A successful double on France and Mbappe will pay no more than 20-1.

Bookmakers, of course, can offer whatever odds they like. Bettors, in turn, must choose whether to take them or leave them.

Many bookmakers now have a rule saying there will be lower odds for a tournament/top scorer double without saying why. Originally the explanation was that the events were related: success for one part of the bet would increase the chance of success for the other. The more goals a player scores, the argument went, the more likely their team are to win. It sounds logical, but not everything that sounds logical is right. Is this?

Lessons from Previous Tournaments

I went through the records of previous European Championships and did some calculations. The winners were five times as likely as other teams to contain a player who was either sole or joint top scorer.

Is that unusual for an international tournament? I did similar sums for World Cups. The winners were also five times as likely as other teams to contain a player who was either lone or equal top scorer.

It would be hard to argue that the leading marksman playing for whoever lifts the trophy is not a related contingency.

Other things follow, though. If a bet on the top scorer playing for the winners is positively related, a bet on the top scorer playing for non-winners must be negatively related. If the first double should offer less than the normal accumulative odds, the second should offer more.

Do bookmakers raise the odds for doubles such as Kane/France or Mbappe/England? As I said, bookmakers are allowed to offer whatever odds they want, just as bettors are free to accept them or reject them. It is still a question worth asking, though.

Winning the Match is not the same as Qualifying for the Next Round

International tournaments come round less often than domestic competitions – usually every four years rather than each year. Even regular football punters will not have bet frequently in some markets. You can remove any possibility of an unpleasant surprise by establishing before you put any money down how a bet would be resolved. Is that what you were looking for?

I have written before about how bets on knockout ties are settled on the score at the end of normal time unless there is a specific statement to the contrary. Anyone placing a bet before the Euro 2020 final on Italy to beat England would have lost, even though Italy lifted the trophy. It happened after extra time and a penalty shootout, which are tiebreak mechanisms excluded from most bets.

Across all European Championships, 25 per cent of group games have been drawn. Forty-three per cent of knockout ties went to extra time. Twenty-eight per cent of knockout ties were decided on penalties. The proportion of group games that finished all-square was smaller than the proportion of knockout ties that went to penalties.

Nobody knows for sure what the percentages will be at Euro 2024, but anybody who reads the schedule will see that there should be 15 knockout ties with the potential to go to extra time or penalties. Are you betting on what you want?

THE WORLD CUP WHERE A DEAD HEAT RAISED BETTING TEMPERATURES

The winner/top scorer double at the 2010 World Cup provoked a deluge of complaints to IBAS.

A popular combination was Spain and their striker David Villa. Spain won while Villa was joint top scorer with five goals. On the same total were Diego Forlan of Uruguay, Thomas Muller of Germany and Wesley Sneijder of the Netherlands.

Applying bookmakers’ dead-heat rules would have given backers of the Spain/Villa double less than they would have received if they had placed a single on Spain. Not surprisingly, there were lots of complaints. Bookmakers quite fairly replied that the double required two things to happen and only one of them had happened. Villa did not score more goals than everybody else; three other players had scored as many.

Even so, most bookmakers unilaterally increased payments so that nobody who had backed Spain and Villa received less than they would have done if they had backed only Spain. IBAS’s verdicts took into account a bookmaker’s rules and what they had done.

Top Goal Scorer or Golden Boot?

Another complication was that some bookmakers had described the top scorer market as the golden boot. Among football followers and football bettors, the terms had been used interchangeably. If players tied for top scorer, people would say those players shared the golden boot.

The World Cup, however, has a trophy called the Golden Boot and it is awarded only to one player. In 2010 it was presented to Muller. The first tiebreaker was assists, and Muller had set up more goals than Forlan, Sneijder or Villa. If a bookmaker had advertised a market as Golden Boot, IBAS insisted that everyone who had backed Muller in a single should be paid in full.

Lessons were quickly learned. Since then bookmakers have taken extra care in the naming of tournament