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Betting on Ligue 1 Soccer
At the top of the French football league system, you’ll find Ligue 1. With 20 clubs competing for the Trophée des Champions, you have online betting markets at your fingertips. With this page, we want you to have the tools to make smart picks. We’ll give you expert soccer analysis and show you how to understand odds so that when you hit up your sportsbook of choice, you know exactly which lines to take.
Learn to Bet on Ligue 1
Before you start betting, you’ll need to grasp basic soccer odds. At betting sites that cater to European football, you’ll see odds laid out like so:
- Paris Saint-Germain -235
- Stade Rennais FC +636
- Draw +415
These are odds for a typical moneyline bet where you would simply have to pick a team to win or for the match to end in a tie. We use American-style (-500) odds but you can choose from Decimal (1.20) and Fractional (1/5). Your region can dictate the type of odds you use. Bettors from the U.K. gravitate toward fractions, people from Europe and Australia tend to prefer decimals, and North Americans are more inclined to use their namesake odds.
Now, let’s explore the numbers themselves. The team with the minus sign (-) is the favorite. The team with the plus sign (+) is the underdog. The draw is neither a fave nor a dog (even though it is at plus money).
These Ligue 1 predictions mean:
- At -235, oddsmakers predict that PSG has a 70.15 percent chance of winning.
- At +636, Les Rouges et Noir have a 13.59 percent shot at a victory.
- At +415, there’s a 19.42 percent possibility of a tie.
You don’t always have to bet the fave. Bets on dogs are riskier which is why they come with bigger rewards. However, do your research – or at least let us do it for you with the articles on this page – before you place a wager on the dog hoping to get a major payday.
What kind of Bets are Sportsbooks Offering on French Football?
For any Ligue 1 match, you have different betting opportunities. Each one requires its own strategy. Let’s unpack them:
- Outright bets: aka moneyline – see odds example from above.
- Point Spread: To make this type of bet you would need to pick a club to cover instead of choosing a Sportsbook. If the spread is set at 1.5 for Bordeaux (-1.5) vs Dijon (+1.5), les Girondins would need to win the game by two or more goals or les Moutardes would need to win outright or lose by no more than one goal. Essentially, this bet puts the favorite at a disadvantage and gives the underdog an advantage to create a more even betting field.
- Totals: This is a bet on the combined score from both teams. For example, the oddsmakers’ set number for a matchup between Monaco and Nice is 3.5. If you think there will be four or more combined goals, you would take the OVER. If you think there will be three or less, you would bet the UNDER.
- Props: These are bets that may not necessarily correlate to the outcome of the match like how many yellow cards a club will get, which team will score first, or how many goals will Mbappe score in his next game or throughout the season?
- Futures: Who will win the title? Any bet made in advance of the finals is a futures wager. These odds are available before the regular season starts. What sets these bets apart from other types is that you can bet on a club to win the French league weeks or even months before gameplay is complete.
- Live Betting: Saint-Étienne is playing Marseille and the match just started. You forgot to place your bets. What do you do? Easy. In-play betting lets you bet live while the game is unfolding. Live odds disappear quickly, so if you see action you like, grab it fast before the sportsbook closes the line.
- Parlays: These are multiple bets on one ticket. You can combine the Metz vs Nantes moneyline with the totals for Strasbourg vs Toulouse and the spread for Lyon vs Amiens. You can also do cross-sport parlays and include hockey, baseball, football, basketball – basically any sport that takes place at the same time as Ligue 1.
- Asian Handicap: This wager eliminates the draw from the betting equation. Instead of having three options, you only have two. But, this bet is somewhat complicated in that you can get zero lines (0), half lines (0.5), and quarter lines (0.25, 0.75). Obviously, a team can’t score half a goal or a quarter of one. What these lines do is give a half- or quarter-goal advantage to the dog and you can win half or a quarter of your bet instead of taking an absolute loss if the team you’re backing loses.
Soccer Betting Guides & Resources
From August to May you have 38 matchdays to wager on as clubs fight for their shot at the championship – and hope to avoid being regulated to Ligue 2. Keep our page bookmarked for updates and Ligue 1 betting news throughout the season. If you're curious about any other leagues across the world, check out our hubs for each competition which are updated daily!
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