Bundesliga Betting Guide
The Bundesliga is one of Europe’s top football leagues and has produced some of the finest players in the football world. German football is straightforward and focused. As Sepp Herberger said, "Der Ball ist rund und das Spiel dauert 90 Minuten." This kind of football is still very entertaining to watch and can be an option to bet on. Check out how to bet on Bundesliga games, as well as strategies to prepare your online bets and more in the article below.
Bundesliga in a nutshell
The Bundesliga is technically composed of two leagues: 1. Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga. However, most people who refer to the league are actually talking about the top flight, 1. Bundesliga, which is what we’ll be focusing on in our Bundesliga betting guide.
When to watch Bundesliga? The seasons are played between August and May, with most games on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
The football league has 18 teams, and there is relegation each season, with teams dropping down a division to the 2. Bundesliga. Since 2007/08, there have been up to three teams being relegated every single season and replaced by teams from the 2. Bundesliga. The bottom two are currently relegated automatically, while the team third from the bottom goes through a playoff system with the team in third place in 2. Bundesliga.
Germany is one of the highest-ranked countries in European football, which means that many of their teams qualify for Europe, with first, second, third, and fourth-place teams entering the group stage of the UEFA Champions League. Fifth place goes into the group stage of the UEFA Europa League and Sixth place enters the third qualifying round of the Europa League.
Some of the European spots can depend on what occurs in the DFB Pokal Cup competition. According to the Bundesliga website: “If the winner of the DFB Cup has already finished in the top six in the Bundesliga, then the sixth place will gain entry to the Europa League group stage, with seventh going into the Conference League playoff.”
Bundesliga top all-time winners
Since its inception, there is one team that has dominated the majority of the league titles. Bayern Munich is always a force to be reckoned with and has won 32 titles.
See list of clubs that have won the German Bundesliga, available at the time of writing:
- Bayern Munich: 32
- Borussia Dortmund: 5
- Borussia Mönchengladbach: 5
- Werder Bremen: 4
- VfB Stuttgart: 3
- FC Köln: 2
- VfL Wolfsburg: 1
Bundesliga top all time goalscorers
The Bundesliga has also produced some amazing goalscorers and household names in the world of football, ranging from the Polish superstar Robert Lewandowski to Peruvian cult hero Claudio Pizarro. The top scorers in the history of the league are as follows:
- Gerd Müller: 365 goals
- Robert Lewandowski: 312 goals
- Klaus Fischer: 268 goals
- Jupp Heynckes: 220 goals
- Manfred Burgsmüller: 213 goals
So far, this is what the top scorers list looks like for the 2022/23 season:
- Niclas Fullkrug: 16 goals
- Vincenzo Grifo: 13 goals
- Marcus Thuram: 13 goals
- Randal Kolo Muani: 13 goals
- Christopher Nkunku: 13 goals
- Marvin Ducksch: 12 goals
How to prepare your Bundesliga bets
Every league has its own quirks and plenty of different areas to research before placing a bet on the results of each game. In this Bundesliga betting guide, we’ve shared some interesting insights regarding the league and the history of the league, which may help you to decide which teams you are going to back and which betting markets are potentially the most interesting. Knowing how to bet on Bundesliga matches is all about doing your research. This guide can help you improve your Bundesliga predictions and filter any betting tips available.
Home field advantage in Bundesliga
Home advantage is definitely prominent in the Bundesliga. A huge number of games are won by the home teams, and this is the case in virtually every season. While the figures vary from one year to the next, there are plenty of seasons where the home team win percentage hovers at around the 45-50% mark, compared to the away team wins being at around the 25-30% mark.
When you consider the fact that a couple of Bundesliga teams tend to be very successful each year and win the majority of their games both home and away, the away figure may even be boosted significantly by teams such as Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich.
When a team in good form plays at home, you will often find them to have very low odds, and this may not represent the best possible value.
Average number of goals per game in Bundesliga
At LeoVegas, football betting odds are offered on markets including “Over 2.5 Goals” and “Over 1.5 Goals”.
Out of the top leagues in Europe, including the Spanish La Liga, Italian Serie A, Premier League, and French Ligue 1, the Bundesliga is consistently one of the highest-scoring leagues. The average number of goals per game in the league has even been above three in some seasons throughout history, which is around 0.5 goals per game higher than some other leagues.
This is largely boosted by the fact that some of the bigger teams tend to score a lot of goals over the season, but the Bundesliga is also known for an attacking style of play.
Both teams score
In recent Bundesliga seasons, the rate of games where both teams have managed to score is around 60%. This is a higher rate than many of the other leagues throughout the world of football. Thanks to the attacking style, we often see the strikers on top rather than the defenses, leading to entertaining games. There is no guarantee, but the league tends to boast plenty of matches where both teams find the net.
Over 2.5 goals
If you're betting on German football, you'll find over 2.5 goals as another popular market. In the 2021/22 season of the Bundesliga, there was an average of 3.12 goals per game. In 59% of all games, there were over 2.5 goals scored, which means three or more goals were scored. In the 2023/23 season, 59% of matches had finished with over 2.5 goals at the time of writing this article.
Matches drawn at half time
Again, this is a statistic that can vary greatly when it comes to individual seasons, but generally, between 40% and 45% of games are level at half-time. While this is a high-scoring division, a lot of the games are still 0-0 going into half-time, which leads to some people backing second-half goals in their bets.
Corners in Bundesliga
Each team tends to have slightly different statistics and averages when it comes to the corners per game market. The average number of corners per game in recent seasons has hovered around the nine to 10 mark for most teams but may be slightly higher for other teams. The teams that have been dominant, including Bayern Munich, sometimes have higher averages due to the fact that they have more deflected shots and shots on target.
If you think a team is going to dominate and have a lot of corners, there are over/under corners markets that you can back in Bundesliga betting. We recommend checking the averages for the season so far and checking what is riding on the game before betting on the corners market.
Player form
There are many different aspects of player form that may come into your Bundesliga betting strategy. You have the option to bet on games using a bet builder, which means you can choose multiple selections on what you think might happen and how the game may unfold, combining team markets and individual markets for higher odds. For example, you can combine a certain team to win along with over 2.5 goals and a player to score.
Goalscorer markets
If you wish, you can bet on the goalscorer markets within a game. This includes the first goalscorer (the player who will score the first goal in the match) or an anytime goalscorer. If a player is in a rich vein of goalscoring form, then you may choose to back this market. You will get better odds on a player to score first than to score anytime but remember that they must be the first player to find the net in this game for this bet to pay out.
Shots and shots on target
Both the shots and shots on target markets are popular in German football, especially due to the fact that the league tends to be quite attacking.
The shots market is very popular among those who are looking to put together bet builders for certain games. If you think a player is going to hit the target, you can include them in your bet builder, and you can also bet on the number of shots altogether they will have in the game.
Cards markets
If you think a game is going to be fiery and a player is going to get a yellow or red card, this is another option for betting. The odds are usually longer than some of the other markets as even the players who are prone to getting yellow cards don’t usually get one every single game. In derby matches, or if a referee is known for dishing out cards, this is another Bundesliga betting market you may wish to get involved in.
Bundesliga history
To fully understand our Bundesliga betting guide, it may help to know a bit about the history of the league itself and how it came to be.
The league was formed in the 1960s, which makes it one of the latest professional leagues to have formed throughout Europe. After West Germany’s 1962 FIFA World Cup exit to Chile, there was a push to create a professional league in the country. A vote of 103/129 Deutscher Fußball-Bund's (German Football Association) delegates were tallied to implement this central league. Football had been professional for decades in many other countries, including England and Spain.
The league began as a 16-team division before rising to 18. It rose again to reach 20 teams upon the unification with East Germany when Hansa Rostock and Dynamo Dresden were introduced to the league as the first eastern representatives.
There have been tweaks over the years, perhaps the biggest one being the switch from a system of awarding two points to three points for a win, which has remained the case ever since. Both European qualification and relegation have also been altered throughout the years as the rulebook has evolved. If you are not from Germany, you probably associate the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich most. They have won it in more than 50% of the seasons throughout its history, and have even been crowned the champions of Europe in the Champions League as recently as 2020.
How to bet on Bundesliga at LeoVegas
To bet on Bundesliga at LeoVegas, you can start by creating an account on the site. The signup process can be completed in minutes, and you will then be ready to start placing your bets.
The next steps are:
- Make a deposit into your account.
- Go to the Sports category on the site and look for upcoming fixtures. You can either browse using the menu or search for Bundesliga or a specific team with the search functionality.
- Choose a fixture you wish to bet on and check out the markets available for that game.
- Choose your markets and the outcomes you wish to predict and place your bets.
When it comes to how to bet on Bundesliga, it’s as straightforward as that. The markets available for Bundesliga games may vary from one match to the next. There is always a lot of choice for those who are looking to back certain teams and players to do well, both on outright betting over the course of the season and individual games.
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