Both Teams to Score Explained: How BTTS Bets Work

If I had to pick one market for a friend’s first football bet, this would be near the top of the list. It’s simple, it keeps you interested for 90 minutes, and you don’t have to care who wins. Here’s both teams to score explained properly, including the rules that catch people out and a simple way to judge the price.

One note for US readers: this is a football market, meaning soccer. You’ll occasionally see versions for other sports, but in practice BTTS lives in football.

Both teams to score explained: the basic rules

The market asks one question: will each team score at least one goal?

• BTTS Yes (sometimes “GG”, for goal-goal) wins if both teams score.
• BTTS No (“NG”, no goal) wins if one team, or both, finish without a goal.

That’s the whole bet. There’s no line to worry about, no handicap and no push. It’s Yes or No, and one of them always wins.

A few things follow from that:

• A BTTS Yes bet can win early. If it’s 1-1 after 20 minutes, you’re done and the rest of the match is a free watch.
• A BTTS No bet can lose early in the same way, and it’s never settled as a winner until the final whistle. One team on zero at 89 minutes is still one corner away from trouble.
• A BTTS Yes bet is alive as long as there’s time. At 2-0 down, the losing team only needs one goal.

Which scorelines win

Final score	BTTS Yes	BTTS No	Why
0-0	Lose	Win	Neither team scored
1-0	Lose	Win	Away team didn’t score
0-3	Lose	Win	Home team didn’t score
1-1	Win	Lose	Both scored
2-1	Win	Lose	Both scored
1-4	Win	Lose	Both scored
3-3	Win	Lose	Both scored

The settlement rules worth knowing

These are the standard rules at most bookmakers (sportsbooks). They can vary, so glance at the market rules if something unusual happens.

1. 90 minutes plus stoppage time. Extra time and penalties don’t count.
2. Own goals count, for the team that’s awarded the goal.
3. Who scores doesn’t matter. Striker, centre-back, goalkeeper from a corner in the 95th minute: a goal is a goal.
4. Goals ruled out by VAR never happened. Bets are settled on the official final score.
5. Abandoned or postponed matches are usually void, with your stake returned. Some books settle Yes as a winner if both teams had already scored.

BTTS is not the same as over 2.5 goals

People mix these up because both are “goals” bets. They overlap a lot, but they’re different questions. BTTS asks who scored. Over/under asks how many. If totals are new to you, I’ve covered them in over/under betting explained.

Final score	BTTS Yes	Over 2.5 goals	BTTS & over 2.5	BTTS & home win
0-0	Lose	Lose	Lose	Lose
1-0	Lose	Lose	Lose	Lose
1-1	Win	Lose	Lose	Lose
3-0	Lose	Win	Lose	Lose
2-1	Win	Win	Win	Win
1-2	Win	Win	Win	Lose
2-2	Win	Win	Win	Lose

The two rows to remember are 1-1 and 3-0. A cagey draw pays BTTS and kills the over. A one-sided win pays the over and kills BTTS. If you expect an even, open game, BTTS is the natural market. If you expect one team to run riot, it isn’t.

BTTS variations you’ll see on the slip

Once you know the base market, the spin-offs are easy to read.

• BTTS & win. Both teams score and your team wins. Bigger odds, two conditions.
• BTTS & over 2.5. Rules out the 1-1. Anything from 2-1 upward wins.
• BTTS in the first half / second half. Both teams must score inside that half. Much less likely, much bigger odds.
• BTTS in both halves. Both teams score in the first half and both score in the second. Rare. Priced accordingly.
• BTTS no draw. Both teams score and the match has a winner.

Every extra condition raises the odds and lowers your chance of winning. These combos are built by the bookmaker’s own pricing model, the same way same-game parlays are, so the margin inside them is hard to check. I explain why that matters in what is a parlay.

BTTS is also a favourite leg in weekend accumulators (parlays): four or five “Yes” picks on one slip. It feels reasonable because each leg is close to a coin toss. Four coin tosses in a row is about a 6% shot before the bookmaker takes a cut. The parlay calculator will show you the combined odds and the implied chance before you commit.

How to judge a BTTS price

The odds tell you what chance the bookmaker is assuming. Divide 1 by the decimal odds to get the implied probability. (How betting odds work has the full method, including fractional and American odds.)

Say a match is priced like this:

• BTTS Yes at 1.80 → implied 55.6%
• BTTS No at 2.00 → implied 50.0%
• Total: 105.6%, so the bookmaker’s margin is 5.6%

To make BTTS Yes a good bet at 1.80, you need to believe it happens more than 55.6% of the time. Not “probably”. More than 55.6%.

A rough way to build your own estimate

Here’s a back-of-the-envelope method. It’s not a model, but it forces you to think about both teams separately.

1. Estimate how often the home team scores in a match like this. Say 75%.
2. Estimate how often the away team scores in a match like this. Say 65%.
3. Multiply: 0.75 × 0.65 = 0.4875, or about 48.8%.
4. Convert to fair odds: 1 ÷ 0.4875 = 2.05.

With those inputs, Yes at 1.80 is a poor price and No at 2.00 is close to fair. Change the inputs and the answer changes; that’s the point. One caution: the two events aren’t truly independent. A team that goes behind attacks more, which nudges BTTS up a little compared with the simple multiplication. Treat the result as a starting point, not a verdict.

What to look at before you bet

• Both attacks and both defences. BTTS needs the weaker team to score too. A strong favourite against a side that barely creates chances is often a BTTS No game, however many goals you expect in total.
• Chance quality, not just scorelines. Expected goals (xG — a measure of how good a team’s chances were) for and against tells you more than “they’ve scored in six straight”.
• Clean sheets and failed-to-score counts, split by home and away.
• Team news. A missing striker hurts Yes. A missing goalkeeper or centre-back helps it.
• Match context. Two-legged ties, must-win games and dead rubbers all change how teams behave.
• The sample size. “BTTS landed in 8 of their last 10” is ten matches against particular opponents. Small samples swing wildly, which is the same problem I describe in why hit rate is misleading.

Plenty of prediction apps and prediction sites publish daily BTTS tips with a percentage attached. Use them as a second opinion: convert the odds to a percentage, compare it with theirs, and ask whether the source shows its losing tips as openly as its winners. If the terms here are new, the betting glossary has short definitions.

BTTS No: the unloved side of the market

Most casual money goes on Yes. It’s the fun side: you’re cheering for goals at both ends. No asks you to hope that somebody fails, which is a harder sell on a Saturday afternoon.

That doesn’t make No automatically good value. It does mean it deserves a look in the right kind of match:

• A strong defensive favourite at home against a side that creates very little.
• Tight, cagey games such as first legs and relegation battles, where neither side wants to open up.
• Matches where one team is missing its main source of goals.

Remember that No has two ways to win: a clean sheet for either side, or a 0-0. Yes has only one. Whichever side you lean towards, the question is the same as always: is the chance higher than the implied probability in the odds? That’s the whole idea behind value betting.

When BTTS suits you, and when it doesn’t

It suits you if you like a bet that stays alive, you follow leagues closely enough to know how teams actually play, and you’re happy with odds near even money.

It doesn’t suit you if you mostly back big favourites to win comfortably (that’s a BTTS No or a handicap view), or if you’re using it purely as accumulator filler because “both teams usually score”. Usually isn’t a number.

BTTS is a fair, easy market, and that’s exactly why bookmakers price it carefully. No bet is a lock. Keep stakes small while you learn, and if you ever need limits or someone to talk to, start with the responsible gambling page.