Is Betting on Your Own Team a Good or Bad Idea?

A common query amongst football bettors is whether they should ever bet on the team they support.

Some stubbornly refuse to do so, with superstitious punters not wanting to curse their side by placing a bet on them to win. Others, who predominantly bet on football games to add to the excitement, see no reason to bet on their own team as they are already emotionally invested in the result.

At the other end of the spectrum are the more hard-minded bettors who proclaim that a good bet is always a good bet, and as such, it should make no difference whether or not you support the team you are considering backing.

But which, if either, side has it right? Here we look at the pros and cons of placing your hard-earned cash on games involving your favourite side.

The Pros

Sound advice for all sports betting is to bet on events or teams that you know the most about. From this perspective, it could be suggested that the games involving the team you support should in fact be the very first matches you look at when considering a bet.

As a fan of the club, you will most likely already be well up to date with the latest injury news, the current form of the side, the mood in the camp etc. Going into more detail, should you religiously watch all of your team’s games, you may well spot more intricate factors, such as how your teams fare against teams which set up in a specific way. Do they struggle against sides who “Park the Bus”? Are they particularly vulnerable to set pieces? Does the absence of a particular player affect the performance of the side to a greater extent than may immediately be apparent?

Betting on your own team may be a particularly good idea if the team you support is a lower-league side.

Accurately taking account of these factors should at least place you on a par with the bookmakers in terms of interpreting the available information, and in some cases may even give you an edge over the odds compilers predominantly data-based approach. Betting on your own team may be a particularly good idea if the team you support is a lower-league side. Due to the high profile and turnover of a competition such as the Premier League, betting companies place a vast amount of time and effort into ensuring that their odds are as accurate as possible. However, bookmakers do not have unlimited resources and manpower, and may simply be unable to put the same level of effort into a League 2 fixture or Non-League game, instead being forced to rely almost solely on a data and stats-based approach. In these cases, even a small snippet of information such as a late injury announcement, or an awareness that your team has been playing well recently but has been very unlucky with the results, may well give you the edge over the odds compilers.

The Cons

Another solid recommendation for sports bettors is to always bet with the head rather than the heart. Herein lies the main problem with betting on your own team. No matter how hard you try, it is incredibly difficult to completely remove emotion from the equation when assessing games involving your favourite side.

Fans are prone to two types of bias. The first, and possibly more common, is that of being overly optimistic. No matter how cold-headed you attempt to be, your desire to see your team win may affect your judgment on how likely they are to pick up all three points. Over-optimism can lead you to latch onto and overemphasise the positive factors, and brush over the negatives – a far-from-ideal approach when selecting a bet.

On the other side of the coin, certain sections of fans are prone to being overly pessimistic. Possibly affected by years of disappointment, and continually being let down in the big games, such supporters may head into any fixture fearing the worst. This type of thinking will lead to bettors continually underestimating their side, which again is not a recipe for punting success.

For some, this is reason enough to never bet on their own team.

Another negative is of course the fact that should you place a bet on your team to win, only to see them lose, you will be faced with a double whammy of emotional and financial pain. For some, this is reason enough to never bet on their own team. Others adopt a reverse strategy of always betting against their own side, creating a win-win scenario, or at least softening the blow should their team lose. There is clearly no logical reason to advocate this approach should the pursuit of profit be your ultimate goal, but for those who take defeats particularly personally, it may serve as a form of emotional insurance.

So. Should You Do It?

As with many things in betting, the answer is, it depends. The key factor here is your ability to completely detach the emotional side of your brain when assessing the odds. A difficult task, but some successful punters predominantly bet only on games involving the team they support. As a rough guide, we would suggest that fans of lower league sides should be slightly less hesitant to place a bet on their team, than supporters of Premier League clubs.

Overall, the best advice would be, not necessarily to avoid the practice entirely, but at least tread a little carefully. One possible approach could be to reduce your usual stake when betting on your favourite team, lessening the overall impact should emotional factors be clouding your decisions. If over a reasonable sample size, you are showing a profit when backing your team, it may be that you are assessing the games dispassionately and you can consider increasing the stakes to your usual level.

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