Premier League betting: the season, the markets and how they settle

The English Premier League is the league Latvian sportsbooks price most heavily, with hundreds of bets on every match every weekend. To make sense of them you need three things: how the 38-round format and the table rules shape season bets, how often each result actually happens, and how much margin match and season bets carry. We read the rules of the Latvian sportsbooks and on 13 October measured the margin on every matchweek 7 game at three sportsbooks licensed in Latvia. Our football betting page covers the football markets.

How the Premier League works

Twenty teams play 38 matches each, and the bottom three go down.

According to the Premier League's explainer, every team plays every other team twice, home and away, for 380 matches in a season. A win is worth three points and a draw one. The bottom three drop to the EFL Championship and three teams come up from it. This season they are Coventry City, Ipswich Town and Hull City, while West Ham United, Burnley and Wolverhampton Wanderers went down last season (Premier League).

Teams level on points are separated by goal difference and then goals scored. Head-to-head results count only at the end of the season, and only if the title, relegation or a European place depends on them (Premier League). That is different from the Champions League, whose league phase ignores head-to-head results entirely; see our article on Champions League betting.

The top four qualify for the Champions League. For 2026/27 England also earned a fifth place, which UEFA awards to the countries with the best results in European competitions, so fifth-placed Liverpool are in the Champions League too. A "Top 4" bet still covers places 1 to 4 only, not qualification for the Champions League.

The 2026/27 calendar

The season started on 21 August and ends on 30 May 2027, when all ten final-round matches kick off together at 18:00 Latvian time.

According to the Premier League fixture release:

• The season has 33 weekends and five midweek rounds; there is no winter break, and the traditional Boxing Day round is on 26 and 27 December.
• Matchweek 8 runs from 23 to 25 October, matchweek 9 from 31 October to 2 November.
• International breaks: there are no league matches from 8 to 21 November or from 20 March to 10 April 2027.

Matches usually kick off on Saturdays at 14:30, 17:00 and 19:30, on Sundays at 16:00 and 18:30, and on Fridays and Mondays at 22:00 Latvian time. Riga is always two hours ahead of London, because both countries change their clocks on the same night. Kick-off times after matchweek 12 can still move as the league confirms the TV picks.

After six rounds Manchester City lead the table with six wins from six and 18 points, with Arsenal second on 15 (Premier League table). Last season Arsenal were champions with 85 points, seven ahead of Manchester City. Only four clubs have won the title in the last ten seasons: Manchester City six times, Liverpool twice, Chelsea and Arsenal once each (Premier League). Over the same period the Champions League had six different winners.

What the last five seasons show

Over five full seasons, 44% of matches ended in a home win, almost 24% in a draw and 32% in an away win.

We counted the results of all 1,900 matches from 2021/22 to 2025/26 from the Premier League's official data. The figures for the last two seasons match the futbol24 statistics exactly:

• Home wins: 839 matches, or 44.2%.
• Draws: 454 matches, or 23.9%.
• Away wins: 607 matches, or 31.9%.
• Goals: 2.93 per match on average.

Draws are far more common in the Premier League than in the Champions League league phase, where they made up about 15% over two seasons. Last season had the most draws of the five, 27.4%, and the fewest goals, 2.75 per match. These figures are not a prediction: they show how often each result has happened, and the sportsbooks' odds already account for it.

Match bets: what counts

League matches have no extra time, so a 1X2 bet covers 90 minutes plus stoppage time.

The Latvian sportsbooks' rules accept football bets on regular time: in the Optibet rules (4.4.1.1.1) that is "90 minūtes (2 puslaiki pa 45 min.)+ kompensācijas laiks", 90 minutes plus stoppage time. How regular time affects bets in knockout matches, where extra time exists, is explained in the Champions League article, and handicap bets in the lesson on the handicap.

Premier League matches are sometimes postponed, and they are then usually played several weeks later. A bet on a postponed match is refunded in that case, even if the match is played later, because every sportsbook has its own waiting period:

• 11.lv: bets are void if the match does not start within 12 hours of the scheduled time (11.lv help).
• OlyBet: if the match is moved by more than 24 hours (43.2).
• LVBET: if the match is cancelled or moved by more than 30 hours (section 30).
• Optibet, Laimz and Klondaika: if the start is moved by more than 48 hours (4.1.9.2).

Sportsbooks offer a great many markets on every match, and each counts them differently. In our measurement on 13 October, 11.lv offered between 388 and 465 bets on matchweek 7 games, OlyBet between 374 and 456, and Optibet between 110 and 122 markets.

Season bets: champion, top 4, relegation and top scorer

Season bets are settled on the official table after the last round, and the sportsbooks' rules ignore later changes.

On 13 October we saw these markets at Latvian sportsbooks:

• 11.lv: champion, top 2, top 4, top 5, top 6, top 10, relegation, top scorer, champion without Arsenal and Manchester City, and the best London and other regional teams.
• Optibet: champion, top 4, top 6, top 10 and relegation.
• OlyBet: no Premier League season bets at the time of our measurement, although other English leagues had them.

The LVBET rules (section 30) say bets on a tournament winner are settled after the last match of the tournament, and that court or other governing-body decisions taken after the tournament ends do not affect the original result. The Optibet rules (4.2.2) follow a similar principle: if an event's result is cancelled later, bets already placed are not affected. None of these rules mentions points deductions directly. If points are deducted before the season ends, they are in the official table that bets are settled on.

The question is live this season. On 29 September an independent Commission found Manchester City guilty of all charges of serious breaches of the Premier League's financial rules, and the sanction will be set at a separate hearing (Premier League). On 2 October the club appealed (Premier League). What the sanction will be, and when it will be set, is not known. The league has deducted points mid-season before: in March 2024 a Commission applied an immediate four-point deduction to Nottingham Forest (Premier League).

The Premier League shares the Golden Boot when players finish level on goals (Premier League), as happened in 2021/22, when two players scored 23 each. For sportsbooks that is a dead heat: Optibet divides the odds by the number of winners (4.2.5), and in LVBET's own example odds of 4 with three joint winners pay 4/3, or 1.33. In the OlyBet and LVBET rules own goals do not count in top scorer bets. LVBET also voids a season bet on a player who moves to a club in another league during the season.

What the bets cost: our measurement

In our measurement the margin on match bets was about 5%, and on the champion market between 11% and 14%.

On 13 October we recorded the 1X2 odds for all ten matchweek 7 games at 11.lv, OlyBet and Optibet and calculated the margin. An example: Leeds United - Manchester United at 11.lv at 2.48 / 3.65 / 2.65. The implied probabilities are 40.32% + 27.40% + 37.74% = 105.46%, so the margin is 5.46%. Across all ten games the average margin was 5.12% at 11.lv, 4.96% at OlyBet and 5.79% at Optibet, but taking the highest of the three prices for each outcome brought it down to 3.76%. That is the same level as in our Champions League measurement. Why comparing odds lowers what a bet costs is explained in our article on sports betting strategies.

Season bets carry a bigger margin:

• Champion: 10.9% at 11.lv and 13.7% at Optibet.
• Top 4: about 10% at both.
• Relegation: 14.8% at 11.lv.

The champion market margin is much smaller than in the Champions League winner market, where it was 23% to 26%, because in the Premier League the odds give one club most of the chance. On the day of our measurement the favourite was Arsenal at 1.50 at both 11.lv and Optibet. That is a 66.7% chance, or about 60% with the margin removed. In other words, even by the market's own reckoning the favourite would miss out on the title in roughly two seasons out of five. Before the season the Opta model gave Arsenal a 38% chance (The Analyst).

Odds change every day, so these figures are a snapshot, not a comparison of sportsbooks. How to turn odds into a probability is explained in our betting basics.

Latvia and the Premier League

No Premier League squad has a Latvian player this season, and TV3 shows the league in Latvia.

We checked the official 2026/27 squads of all 20 clubs, 585 players in total, and none of them is from Latvia. TV3 holds the Premier League's live rights in Latvia from 2025/26 to 2027/28 (Premier League), and match highlights are also on TV3 Play.

Where to bet on the Premier League

In Latvia you may only bet with operators licensed by the State Revenue Service.

Since 1 April 2026 gambling has been supervised by the State Revenue Service, which publishes the list of licensed operators. Optibet, Laimz and Klondaika, all licensed in Latvia, use the same sports betting rules, so the Optibet sections quoted in this article apply to all three. We list the sportsbooks' risk-free bet offers on our risk-free bets page, and if you bet during matches our guide to live betting will help.

Play within your means

The Premier League has ten matches every weekend, each with hundreds of markets, so it is easy to stake more than you planned. Set a budget for the whole round and stop when it is spent. Our responsible gambling page gathers the tools that help, and how to join the self-exclusion register kept by the State Revenue Service is explained in a separate article. The addiction support line of the Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, 67037333, is anonymous (in Latvian). Betting is for people aged 18 and over only.