How to find both teams to score tips that actually hold up
A practical guide to reading the both teams to score market: which numbers predict goals at both ends, where the price is usually wrong, and how to check a BTTS tip before you take it.
Match Terminal8 min read
Both teams to score is the market most people start with, and it's the one where the gap between "looks obvious" and "actually holds up" is widest. A BTTS bet doesn't ask you to pick a winner. It asks a narrower question — will each side put at least one past the other — and that narrowness is exactly what makes it easy to get lazy about.
This is how to read the market properly: what the bet actually settles on, which numbers predict it, the mistake almost everyone makes, and a short checklist for sanity-checking a tip before you take it.
What the bet actually settles on
Both teams to score pays out when each side scores at least one goal in normal time. The specifics matter more than people expect:
- Ninety minutes plus stoppage only. Extra time and penalties don't count in a cup tie. A 0-0 that becomes 2-1 in extra time is a losing BTTS bet.
- Own goals count. They're credited to the attacking team for settlement, so an own goal usually makes a BTTS bet, not breaks it.
- The scoreline is irrelevant beyond 1-1. A 1-1 draw and a 4-3 thriller settle identically. You are not betting on goals; you are betting on goals being shared.
That last point is the one to hold on to, because it's where most bad BTTS reasoning starts.
The mistake: confusing goals with shared goals
The instinct is to look for high-scoring fixtures. Two attacking teams, a league with a big goals-per-game average, a match everyone expects to be open — back BTTS.
But a 4-0 is a high-scoring game and a losing BTTS bet. So is a 3-0, and so is a 5-0. Blowouts are, by definition, games where one side scored a lot and the other scored nothing. The fixtures that produce the biggest goal totals are frequently mismatches, and mismatches are the single most reliable way to lose a BTTS bet.
What you actually want is symmetry: two teams that both score and both concede. A pair of mediocre defences is worth more to a BTTS bet than a pair of brilliant attacks.
This is why BTTS and over/under 2.5 goals diverge more often than people assume. They correlate, but they are not the same bet, and the matches where they come apart — the 3-0s and the 1-1s — are where the value sits.
The four numbers that matter
For any fixture, there are four relevant rates, not two:
| Scores | Concedes | |
|---|---|---|
| Home side | how often they score at home | how often they concede at home |
| Away side | how often they score away | how often they concede away |
A BTTS bet needs all four to be healthy. The home side scoring in 85% of home games is worth nothing if the away side has been shut out in most of their road trips.
Two refinements that do real work:
Split home and away, always. Team-level season averages hide enormous splits. Plenty of sides are genuinely dangerous at home and toothless away — travel, crowd, and a manager who sets up to contain rather than attack. A combined average smears those two very different teams into one meaningless number. Every team page on this site shows the split for exactly this reason.
Use a recent window, but know what it hides. Six to ten games is usually the sweet spot. Shorter and you're reading noise; longer and you're reading a squad that no longer exists. But check which games are in the window. Six matches against the bottom of the table is not the same evidence as six against the top.
Where the price is usually wrong
Bookmakers price BTTS well in leagues they cover closely. The inefficiencies cluster in specific, findable places:
Reputation lag. A club with a defensive reputation that has quietly stopped defending will be priced on the reputation for weeks. The same works in reverse — a promoted side everyone expects to leak goals sometimes doesn't. Reputation moves slower than form, and the price follows reputation.
One missing defender. Injury and suspension news moves the match-result market fast, because that's where the money is. It moves the BTTS price more slowly and less completely. A first-choice centre-back or a specialist goalkeeper missing is a genuine BTTS signal that is often only partly in the price.
Low-information leagues. Second tiers, smaller European leagues, and competitions outside the main broadcast markets get less attention from traders and far less betting volume to correct the line. If you're going to build an edge anywhere, it's more likely there than in the Premier League.
Late-season motivation. A team already safe and a team with nothing to play for produce open, sloppy football. A side fighting relegation produces the opposite. League position in April tells you things the season-long averages don't.
The 60-second check
Before taking any BTTS tip — yours or someone else's — run this:
- Is it a mismatch? Look at the 1X2 price. If one side is a heavy favourite, you are betting against the most likely shape of the game. Skip it unless you have a specific reason.
- Do all four rates hold up? Home team scoring and conceding at home; away team scoring and conceding away. One weak number is usually enough to pass.
- Who's missing? Check both teams' defensive absentees, and the goalkeeper specifically.
- What's the game state likely to be? A team needing a win plays differently from a team happy with a point. Cup ties with a second leg to come are frequently cagey.
- Is the price worth it? BTTS lands often enough that short prices are common. Around evens you need to be right more than half the time just to break even, and the bookmaker's margin is inside that. Being right is not the same as being paid enough for being right.
Step five is the one people skip, and it's the one that decides whether a strategy makes money. A tip that wins 60% of the time at 1.60 is a losing strategy. The same tip at 1.90 is a good one.
Judging a tipster's BTTS record
If you're following someone else's calls rather than making your own, the question isn't their hit rate. It's their hit rate against the prices they took.
A tipster posting BTTS selections at 1.50 and hitting 62% is losing money slowly. One hitting 48% at 2.20 is doing well. Any record shown as a bare win percentage, with no odds attached, is not evidence of anything — and the easiest way to inflate a BTTS record is to only ever post short prices.
Our tipster leaderboard settles every pick against the odds that were recorded when the pick was posted, before kickoff, which is why the profit column and the win-rate column often disagree. When they disagree, the profit column is the one telling you the truth.
Putting it together
BTTS rewards patience more than cleverness. The edge isn't in finding an exotic angle; it's in refusing the fixtures that look good and aren't — the mismatches, the short prices, the teams whose reputation is doing the work their recent form isn't.
Start from symmetry, split home and away, check who's injured, and be honest about whether the price pays you enough. That's most of it.
Today's fixtures, with the scoring and conceding splits already worked out, are on the both teams to score tips page.
Predictions and analysis on this site are informational only. Betting involves risk and you should never stake money you can't afford to lose. If gambling is causing you harm, BeGambleAware offers free, confidential support. 18+.