Each Way Betting

Each Way Betting (often shortened to ‘ew betting’) involves essentially placing two bets on the outcome of a sporting event – one ‘win bet’ and one ‘place bet’. Hence, a £10 each way bet would involve a total stake of £20 - £10 on the win and £10 on the place portion.

For the ‘win bet’ part, your selection must simply win whatever race, event or tournament you’ve bet on. The ‘place bet’ is basically a back-up bet in case your selection doesn’t win, but comes pretty close (usually in second or third place, but bookmakers sometimes pay out on fourth or even lower depending on the size of the field).

Pay-outs on place bets are made at a fraction of the odds that were originally offered on them to win – typically ¼. So if you bet £10 each way (i.e. £20 in total) on, for example, Rory McIlroy to win the Open Championship at 10/1, and he finishes second, your stake would return £35, the odds having reduced by a quarter to 2.5/1.

Each Way Betting is most common in horse racing, and events with a big field of competitors such as golf and tennis. Each Way Betting comes into play slightly less often in football, with only two possible winners in an individual match, but is most commonly offered on the winner of a league, cup or tournament where finishing ‘places’ are easily determined.

The benefits of Each Way football betting is the better value it can offer than you’ll find offered on standard “1X2” football match outrights. It can be a good choice when you’re not looking to back the favourite, but feel some confidence that your preferred selection will fare well, if not necessarily actually winning the competition in question.

Each Way football betting can also be a good choice if you have a strong fancy for a big-priced outsider to do well. For example, with a fair wind and a good draw, it’s distinctly possible for an unfancied team to reach the FA Cup final (Portsmouth, Stoke City, Wigan Athletic, Hull City, Aston Villa, Crystal Palace and Watford have all done so in the last 10 years) and thus make a very healthy profit from an Each Way Bet. Many bookmakers will offer half the odds for an Each Way Bet if the selected team reaches the final. Picking out that surprise finalist while the early rounds are still in progress is the tricky part, of course!

Making sure your EW Bet profits

To ensure you’ll generate a profit, you should only consider an Each Way Bet if your selection is priced at least 4/1. Anything shorter than that and you will not generate a profit if your team is placed, as the pay-out will be a quarter of the price (or in some cases only a fifth).

An Each Way Bet is one for those who prefer the delayed gratification of watching a bet play out over the long-term. There’s not quite the quick thrill of backing a horse or the immediacy of an in-play football bet. It’s more a slow-burning intrigue of following your selection’s undulating fortunes unfolding over the course of a season or tournament.

Let’s take the Premier League as an example of Each Way Betting on football. The pre-season odds on Chelsea winning the 2019/20 title are 20/1. With Manchester City and Liverpool the clear favourites and Tottenham coming in strongly behind them, Chelsea’s outright price to win the title doesn’t look too attractive. An Each Way Bet could therefore offer more chance of making a profit.

A £10 each way bet (i.e. £20 in total) with a standard pay-out at a quarter of the odds (in this case 5/1) would return a healthy £50 (£60 including the return of your original stake) if the Blues finish second or third.

If, in this example, Chelsea do confound the odds and win the Premier League, the returns are handsome. Both the ‘win’ and the 'place’ portion of your stake would pay out. So, your £10 ‘win’ bet would return £200 (plus the return of your £10 stake) and the Each Way Bet would return £50 (plus the return of your £10 stake) for a highly satisfying overall profit of £250.

Firstly, you need to select on which market you want to place your bet. Let’s stick with the example of the Premier League, for which many outright bets are available before the season begins.

Bet365 are one of many bookmakers offering ¼ of the odds on Each Way Bets on the title winners on teams finishing second. On bet365.com, just head to their ‘Soccer’ section, select ‘Outrights’, choose ‘Premier League 2019/20’, then ‘To win outright’ and make your selection. In the below example, we’ve chosen Tottenham, who are 16/1 for the title. Tick the “E/W” box when placing your bet, as in the example below. If Spurs finish second in the 2019/20 season – which certainly doesn’t appear an unreasonable prospect for Champions League finalists – you would make a £30 profit.

William Hill’s market on Euro 2020 includes England priced 5/1 to win the trophy at Wembley (see below). To find this on the William Hill site, go to ‘Football’, then ‘Competitions’, select ‘Euro 2020’ then ‘Outrights’ and select your chosen team. When entering your stake, tick the EW box, with Hills offering half the odds for losing finalists. Thus a £10 each way bet would return £25 if England were to lose in the final, but a tastier £95 if they were to lift the trophy, with both halves of the bet paying out.

Working out the price and potential winnings from each way bets is necessarily a little more complicated than a straight single bet. That’s why many online bookmakers offer Each Way Bet calculators.

The series of dropdown menus enable the user to select the various aspects of the bet to determine what the returns will be. These include whether the bet is a win or placed, the odds, and what percentage of the odds are offered for a place.

The punter can create higher-odds bets using multiples, creating a more nuanced type of accumulator. In horse racing, for example, you could put a multiple Each Way Bet on three horses in three different races. If all three win, both your ‘win’ and your ‘each way’ multiples will pay out. If all three horses are placed (or if the result is a mixture of race winners and placed horses), then your ‘win’ bet fails, but the Each Way Bet will return – at a percentage of the combined odds determined by the bookmaker. Prices on these multiples will naturally be higher than a single Each Way Bet.

In football, one of the few ways of building multiple Each Way Bets is on the ‘first goalscorer’ market. Betting on a player to score the first goal can come with an each way option, which will pay out at a stated percentage of the odds (again, usually ¼) if that player scores the second, third or fourth goal in the same match. This could be combined over a number of different players in different matches to create a higher-odds bet. If all selected players score the first goal of their respective match, both halves of the Each Way Bet pay out. If one or all the players are among the early goalscorers in their matches, only the ‘placed’ part of the bet would produce a return.

The best time to use an Each Way Bet in football is at the start of a season or tournament, when there are many possible winners and the odds will be most favourable – even at ¼ or ½ for a place bet. When you particularly fancy a long-odds outsider to do well but not necessarily win the competition; or have reason to believe a rank outsider will have a good run; or where there is a strong favourite to win the competition – making the odds for the remainder of the field more appealing; these could all be examples when Each Way Betting may come into your thinking.