Oddsfactory’s analysis of 1,764 football odds found substantial differences between the margins offered by four bookmakers. Coolbet recorded the lowest average 1X2 margin – and produced the lowest-margin market in more than 80% of the matches tested.
When comparing football odds, bettors naturally tend to look at one thing: which bookmaker is offering the highest price on the team they want to back? There is, however, another useful way of assessing how competitive a bookmaker’s odds really are.
The bookmaker margin – commonly known as the overround – looks at the entire market rather than one individual selection.
As part of Oddsfactory’s large-scale football odds comparison, we analysed the 1X2 markets offered by Coolbet, Epicbet, Casino Friday and UnionBet across 147 matches.
The study included 441 different home, draw and away outcomes and 1,764 individual bookmaker prices. And when we compared the margins built into those markets, the result was emphatic.
Coolbet had the lowest 1X2 margin in 120 of the 147 matches tested – equivalent to 81.6% of the entire sample.
What is a bookmaker margin?
Before looking more closely at the results, it is worth explaining what bookmaker margin actually means. Decimal odds can be converted into an implied probability. For example, odds of 2.00 represent an implied probability of 50%.
In a theoretical market with no bookmaker margin, the implied probabilities of every possible outcome would add up to exactly 100%.
Football bookmakers, however, generally build a margin into their prices. As a result, when the implied probabilities of the home win, draw and away win are added together, the total will usually exceed 100%. The amount above 100% is the overround. Consider a simple example.
If all three outcomes in a football match were priced at 3.00, each would carry an implied probability of 33.33%. Added together, they equal approximately 100%, meaning there is effectively no theoretical bookmaker margin.
If all three were instead priced at 2.80, each carries an implied probability of approximately 35.71%. Together, they equal 107.14%. The market therefore has an overround of approximately 7.14%. For bettors, the important principle is straightforward:
The lower the bookmaker margin, the more competitive the overall set of prices tends to be.
Coolbet recorded an average margin of just 3.36%
Across the 147 football matches analysed by Oddsfactory, Coolbet recorded the lowest average 1X2 margin of the four bookmakers.
The median represents the middle result when each bookmaker’s 147 match margins are placed in order. That makes it a useful additional measure of what bettors typically encountered within the sample.
Coolbet’s 2.45% median was considerably below the figures recorded by UnionBet and Casino Friday and remained below Epicbet’s 3.27%. Both the average and median calculations therefore produced the same ranking:
1. Coolbet
2. Epicbet
3. UnionBet
4. Casino Friday
Why does a lower margin matter to bettors?
Bookmaker margin can sound like a technical concept, but ultimately it comes back to something very simple: the odds available to the customer.
A lower-margin market generally means more of the theoretical probability is being returned through the prices. Imagine two bookmakers assessing a match in exactly the same way. If one applies a smaller margin, it has greater scope to offer higher odds to its customers.
That does not guarantee it will have the highest price on every outcome. Bookmakers distribute their margins differently, and their opinions about the true probability of the home win, draw and away win can vary.
This is precisely why comparing individual odds remains important. But over a large sample of matches, bookmaker margin provides an effective way of measuring the overall competitiveness of a sportsbook’s pricing. And our 147-match comparison produced a sizeable difference between the four operators.
The best individual odds support the margin result
The margin figures become even more interesting when considered alongside the individual prices from the same study. Across the 441 home, draw and away outcomes, Coolbet offered or shared the highest odds on 256 selections – 58.0% of everything tested.
It was the sole highest-priced bookmaker on 211 occasions, meaning no other operator matched its price. When ties were adjusted so that exactly one best-price point was distributed for every selection, Coolbet accounted for 52.0% of all market-leading prices.
Epicbet accounted for 30.7%, UnionBet 9.6% and Casino Friday 7.7%.
So the two different measurements tell a consistent story. Coolbet did not simply produce the lowest theoretical margin.
Its lower-margin markets translated into a substantially greater number of market-leading individual prices.
Even when Coolbet wasn’t best, it was usually close
Oddsfactory also measured how far each bookmaker’s prices were, on average, from the highest odds available on each of the 441 selections. Coolbet again finished comfortably first.
Across all 441 selections, Coolbet’s price was on average only 1.20% below the best price available. This measurement includes the selections where another bookmaker won the comparison.
It therefore highlights another important feature of the results: Coolbet frequently offered the highest odds, but when it didn’t, it tended not to be far behind.
Premier League margins were particularly competitive
One of the strongest results came when we isolated the Premier League matches in the study. Our sample contained 30 Premier League fixtures. Coolbet had the lowest 1X2 margin in an extraordinary:
29 of those 30 matches.
Its average margin across the Premier League sample was 2.14%, compared with 3.39% at Epicbet and 5.13% at both Casino Friday and UnionBet.
That means Coolbet’s average Premier League margin was less than half that recorded by Casino Friday and UnionBet within this particular sample.
The Premier League deserves a separate examination – and we will return to those results in greater detail – but they demonstrate how the overall 147-match finding was reflected in one of football’s biggest betting markets.
Coolbet didn’t win everywhere
It is important to distinguish between lowest bookmaker margin and highest odds on every selection.
They are not the same thing. Epicbet, for example, performed particularly strongly when we isolated match favourites. It offered or shared the highest favourite price in 90 of the 147 matches, compared with 62 for Coolbet.
On heavy favourites priced below 1.50, Epicbet was also the strongest performer in our analysis. That is why bettors looking for the absolute highest price on a specific selection can still benefit from comparing bookmakers.
However, the picture changed dramatically when looking at draws, outsiders and the overall three-way market. Coolbet offered or shared the best outsider odds in 76.2% of matches and the best draw odds in 61.2%.
Combined with its 3.36% average margin, those results explain why Coolbet ultimately finished comfortably ahead when the entire 1X2 market was assessed.
A result consistent with Bookmakertesten 2026
The findings also follow Coolbet’s strong performance in Bookmakertesten 2026. Oddsfactory served as the official sportsbook partner for Bookmakertesten 2026, contributing to the assessment and scoring of the bookmakers’ betting products. That broader test examined areas including odds, sports selection, user experience, bonuses and the overall sportsbook offering.
Coolbet finished the assessment with 93 points out of 100, taking the overall Bookmaker of the Year 2026 title as well as the separate Best Odds 2026 award.
The two studies use different methodologies and should not be treated as the same test.
Bookmakertesten examines the wider bookmaker proposition across numerous categories, whereas this Oddsfactory analysis is based specifically on 1,764 recorded 1X2 football prices from 147 matches.
Nevertheless, Coolbet recording the lowest average margin – and the lowest margin in 120 of the 147 matches – is consistent with the strong odds performance identified during the earlier Bookmakertesten assessment.
See the complete Bookmakertesten 2026 results
Read Oddsfactory’s interview with Coolbet following its Bookmakertesten 2026 win
How the margin comparison was conducted
Oddsfactory analysed the 1X2 odds recorded across 147 football match previews, comparing Coolbet, Epicbet, Casino Friday and UnionBet.
Each match produced three comparable outcomes – home win, draw and away win – giving us 441 selections and 1,764 individual bookmaker prices. For every bookmaker and every match, we converted the three decimal prices into implied probabilities using:
Implied probability = 1 ÷ decimal odds
The three implied probabilities were then added together. The amount by which the total exceeded 100% was recorded as that bookmaker’s 1X2 overround.
For example, an implied probability total of 104% produces a 4% bookmaker margin. The comparison is based on the prices recorded by Oddsfactory when each individual match preview was prepared. Football odds change as markets develop, so the study does not claim to represent every price offered by each bookmaker between the market opening and kick-off.
Esports were excluded because comparable markets were not available from all four bookmakers. Matches without a complete four-bookmaker 1X2 comparison were also excluded, along with two markets containing clear pricing/data anomalies.
The purpose was straightforward: take a substantial collection of real football odds recorded during the course of Oddsfactory’s normal match-preview coverage and determine which of the four bookmakers consistently priced its 1X2 markets most competitively. Across 147 matches, the answer was decisive.
Coolbet recorded the lowest average margin at 3.36% and had the lowest 1X2 margin in 120 matches – 81.6% of the entire test.