Premier League vs. NFL: What’s the Difference in Betting Trends

With the Premier League underway for a new season and the NFL 2026 season about to begin, plenty of football (of both types) fans will be happy to see the action back on their screens over the coming weeks and months.

Both leagues obviously carry a lot of interest for bettors, too, with billions wagered on hundreds of upcoming games. They are the two biggest sports leagues in the world when it comes to betting volumes.

But what, if any, are the differences between the leagues in betting trends? Let’s have a look with some thoughts and comparisons:

The Point Spread Is the Main Draw in the NFL

In the UK, they’d call the point spread “handicap betting”, but it is also more of an art form in the US and NFL games. For example, the Broncos vs Chiefs Monday Night Football odds – the first Monday Night Football Game of the new NFL season – have the latter at -3 in the spread to beat the Broncos. While handicap betting is fairly popular in the Premier League, these theoretical lines are scrutinized with much more gusto in the NFL. It’s a bigger market than the game winner.

The Saturday Acca Remains a Premier League Staple

The acca is a big deal in the Premier League. Again, a US NFL alternative exists – the parlay – but it’s not quite as institutionalized as picking your teams on a Saturday afternoon. Some of this is due to the NFL’s greater focus on breaking down individual games from a betting perspective.

The NFL Focuses More on Stats and Player Props

The NFL scrutinizes individual performances more, with an intense focus on stats-based performance bets known as player props. Now, we have to add a caveat here: Premier League betting is catching up in that respect, especially since the advent of bet builders. Now, bettors will combine markets on areas like shots on target, assists, yellow cards and more. It’s been a real shift in the style of betting, supported by wider availability of stats.

Which League Is More Predictable?

Hmmm. This is not an easy question to answer, mainly because it depends on how you look at it. For individual games, we would argue that the NFL is more predictable – one of the reasons people use spreads to get better odds – but if it is over the course of the season, we’d argue that the Premier League becomes more predictable. While there are outliers – Leicester in 2016, for example – you can usually whittle down the contenders for the Premier League to three or four teams, sometimes fewer, but we’d say at least a dozen teams can win the Super Bowl in any given season.

There Are More Similarities Than Differences

In the end, many different approaches to betting on the two leagues are similar, with the main differences being nomenclature. For example, the Over/Under 2.5 goals bet in the Premier League has much the same theory behind it as the Over/Under Points totals in the NFL. Futures are the same as outright betting, and you can compare season win totals and playoff qualification to betting on the Top 4 and Champions League spots.