We have become accustomed to gambling adverts during live sporting events. Recently, many firms have made a major push on marketing the ‘two goals ahead payout’ promotion to attract customers. This is for single bets, if the team you bet on to win goes two goals ahead at any stage, the bookmakers pays out regardless of whether the opposition comes back to draw or win the match. I hazard to guess that the rationale for this is that these leading teams most likely win anyway. Paying out early gives the bookmakers more time to encourage the bettor to reinvest profits.
For bettors, like many gambling ‘specials’, this offer may sound enticing but it does not correspond to a significant ‘discount’, despite the marketing efforts. Take this season’s EPL, this offer cost the bookmakers on only 11 matches (circa 3% of matches where a two goal lead was spurned and the team did not go on to win). The vast majority of teams that have a two goal lead do go on to win anyway. Very often it is the underdog who lose the two goal lead and fail to win – these underdogs would probably be less staked on – losses the two goal lead.
The bookmakers have become experts at offering specials and promotions which intuition would suggest are simple or a good deal but are not as good as they appear. The above promotion nudges bettors away from backing draws. For a customer to benefit from the insurance, it also requires a 4 goals in a match and at least two for each team, which is an achievement in and of itself. Then it requires goals to be ordered in a specific sequence.