Football Betting for Beginners: What is the two goals ahead offer and why you should be using it

There’s plenty of promotions and additional offers available at betting sites for punters to use nowadays. One you may have heard of when it comes to football is the early payout offer when a team goes two goals ahead. 

Which bookmakers have this offer available?

• bet365 - who refer to this as the ‘2 goals ahead early payout’
   
• Paddy Power - who refer to this as the ‘ 2 up - you win offer’

What is the two goals ahead early payout and how does it work?

This one really is as simple as it sounds: place a bet on a team to win a football match and if they go two goals ahead at any point, you get paid out as a winner - simple!

So to qualify for the offer all you need to do is place a pre-match bet on the standard full-time result for a football game from the selected competitions (see below).

Then if the team you have backed to win the game goes two goals ahead at any stage during the match, the bookmaker will pay out your bet in full. This is regardless of whether the opposition comes back to draw or win the game. 

Which competitions is the offer available on?

As mentioned above, this offer is available on a wide range of competitions from around Europe, which we have listed below. These are the same for both bet365 and Paddy Power apart from the EFL Cup, which the Irish bookmaker does not include. 

• English Premier League

• English Championship

• English League 1

• English League 2

• English FA Cup (from first round onwards)

• English EFL Cup (not with Paddy Power)

• Scottish Premiership

• Spanish Primera Liga

• German Bundesliga I

• Italian Serie A

• French Ligue 1

• Uefa Champions League (from group stage onwards)

• Uefa Europa League (from group stage onwards)

Multiple or combination bets

When it comes to creating combination bets or accumulators this offer is not available with Paddy Power as they only allow it on pre-match singles. However with bet365 you can combine these selections for multiple bets and ‘Bet Builder’ bets. If a team you have backed for the win goes two goals ahead, this selection will be marked as won and will display a green tick within the ‘my bets’ section. 

Stake and Payout limits

Paddy Power does place a maximum payout on this offer, this is limited to £2500.

Restrictions and removal of Two ahead early payout offer

In today’s punting landscape there are bettors who are not eligible for certain offers due to their profitability. However, with bet365 it is very rare for customers to not have this offer available to them. At the moment both bet365 and Paddy Power have in their terms and conditions that this offer will expire on the 31st December, so it remains to be seen whether this offer will be extended and be around forever or if it does indeed finish at the year’s end. 

Verdict

If you are a fan of betting on football accumulators or even just betting on your own team to win every week, I’d highly recommend using bet365 to do so. The ability to have an early payout on the teams in your accumulator or single bets, if they go two goals ahead, is certainly worth having. There have been numerous three-goal comebacks in the Premier League this season already, most recently with West Ham scoring three to level the game with Tottenham late on.

Over the course of the season using this offer could drastically impact your profit and loss. Football and accumulator betting can be tough at the best of times and as a punter we should use all the assistance that is thrown our way.