As the name suggests, fixed odds betting is ‘fixed’ – you will always know before you place the bet the possible outcomes, and how much you stand to win or lose. Spread betting is very different – you may lose a lot, win a lot, or win or lose a little depending on how accurate your prediction is, it is a case of the more correct you are, the more you win, and the more wrong your prediction is, the more you loose.

Our everyday bets are a good example of Fixed Odds betting e.g. you enter into a bet with a friend that he cannot finish 2 bottles of fanta at a go,  if he does, you’ld pay him N1,000 but if he fails he gets to pay you N500. For this example, your odds are fixed at N1,000 which is the amount you stand to loose in the event that you friend wins the bet (it cannot be greater).

However, a Spread Betting version of the above example would be if you promise to pay your friend N300 for every Bottle of fanta he succeeds in finishing after the second bottle. What this means is that the more bottles of fanta your friend downs after the second bottle, the more N300 you would have to pay him. So if your friend succeeds in finishing 6 bottles then you would have to cough-out N1,200 being payment for the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th bottles.

Spread betting is common place in financial markets but it is increasingly being adopted in sports betting markets too, and carries the potential for much greater rewards, but also involves larger risk than fixed odds betting. The increasingly popular “Online Forex Trading” is a form of Spread Betting. Where you get paid for successfully predicting the direction of the market (currency pairs), such that the more correct you are, the more money you make, however the flip side is where the real risk resides.

There are several ways in which fixed odds may be presented, two of which are most common in sports betting. Odds such as 4/1, called fractional odds, imply that for every one unit staked, four units in addition to the one staked will be returned if the bet wins. Another form of presenting the odds is in decimal format which is more straight forward e.g. 3.52, implies that for every one naira u get three naira fifty-two kobo if your bet wins, so winnings equals Stake multiplied by Odds. If you bet N200 on an event with odds of 2.75, if your prediction is correct, you get N550 (N200 * 2.75) however if you prediction is wrong then you loose your Stake of N200.

There are definite advantages that fixed odds betting possesses over spread betting and vice-versa involving risks and potential earnings. Betting casually is best done at fixed odds, whilst spread betting professionals take preference to the high-risk, but high-reward, alternative.