If there is one thing that dominates the thoughts of most bettors around the world, it is the opportunity to get better odds on a bet they wish to make. Landing a winning bet is a great feeling, but doing so knowing that you have backed that selection at the longest odds possible makes it even better.

Now, many punters elect to use odds comparison sites to help them with this. They are useful, but in order to fully use this tool, you do need to have many different sports betting accounts with many different providers. This can prove to be somewhat difficult to administrate properly, as well as being somewhat expensive when you add up the cost of all those deposits you will need to make.

However, there is another option and it is one readily available at sites just like the popular bet365 Sport. That is ante post (or futures) betting.

This type of betting is also available at many other sites all over the world including those available now in many different states of the United States. Check out the information on the bestbetusa.com site for more details on which sites are available in the state where you live, if you are checking in from across the Atlantic Ocean.

So what is ante post or futures betting? How does it work? What benefits does it offer punters and are there any negatives that you should be wary of? In this article, we are going to delve into this particular form of betting to discover just how it can be a lucrative way to place bets, if you are willing to have a bit of patience.

What Is Futures Or Ante Post Betting?

Ante Post betting is a bet placed on an event well in advance of the time that the event will becontested. Because the event will take place in the future and is not going to happen within the next day or so, this type of bet is also called ‘futures’ betting by many companies.

Ante Post tends to be a term used in Horse Racing, Futures (or similar) tends to be used in other sports.

This type of betting is very popular and there is a very real chance that you will have made a bet of this type in the past without even realising you were doing so. For example, some of the most popular types of futures or ante post bets are:

• Placing a bet at the start of a season on a team or individual to win a selected trophy. For example, backing Manchester City to win the Premier League, or backing Rory McIlroy to win The Masters.
• Backing a horse to win a selected future race (so for example, you could pick Tiger Roll to win the Grand National, which is coming up later this year in April).
• Backing a footballer to be a top goalscorer in a competition for the season. Such as backing Harry Kane to be leading goalscorer in the Premier League.

There are as many types of futures or ante post bets as there are sporting events, but it is fair to say that these markets are generally more popular with the most popular sports.

What Are The Risks Of Ante Post Betting?

There are some additional risks to you when factoring in a futures or ante post bet. Any bet that is placed on an event in the future does run the risk of a number of external factors influencing the bet, or even making your selection non-viable.

For example, if you picked a horse to win the forthcoming Aintree Grand National and in the run up to the race, it was injured, or was just withdrawn from the race, then your bet would of course not be able to win as the horse would not run in the race.

Similarly, if you back a footballer to be the top goalscorer in the Premier League and your selection gets a long-term injury just a few games into the season, then the chances are that they are not likely to be a realistic winner of that market.

It is these external risk factors that put some punters off futures betting, but the flip side of this is that because of these risks, you can often get much better odds on selections for future markets, than you can when odds are made available much closer to the time.

What Are The Benefits Of Futures or Ante Post Betting?

As we mentioned above, there are some positives to futures and ante post betting and the biggest of these is the better value odds you can get when you place bets on this market, compared to much closer to the competition being completed.

For example, at the start of the 2015/16 season in the Premier League, you could have backed Leicester City to win the Premier League title at odds of 5000/1. However, by the time we had reached March or April, much closer to the end of the season, with the Foxes and Tottenham leading the title race, the odds on them winning had been slashed to a much lower price.

At the moment, a good example of this is the odds on Grand National winner Tiger Roll. The 2-time winner of the race is currently 20/1 with bet365 Sport to win the 2021 race, but you can bet that on the day, if Tiger Roll does race that the odds on the horse will be much shorter than that. However, the risk factor is that the horse could get injured or be pulled out of the race by its owner in the meantime.

The final benefit of this type of betting is that it can make seeing how a season or event rolls out more exciting. If you have Robert Lewandowski to finish as the top scorer at Euro 2020 and he is a goal behind another player with Poland set to play in the final, this means you will be rooting for him to score a goal and give you a real interest in the game. It is this added interest in events that makes futures betting so appealing to many.

What Futures or Ante Post Betting is Available at bet365?

The great news is that bet365 Sport offers an extensive range of futures betting across a myriad of markets. Football and Horse Racing both offer a wide range of futures betting markets, but you can also find futures betting across almost all sports.

For example, you can bet on which driver will win this year’s F1 World Championshop, who will win the World Snooker Championship in May, who will win the European Championship football tournament and who will land the PDC Premier League Darts trophy this year.

Another bonus is that bet365 organises each sports popular Futures betting options into a separate section on the site and you just need to click on this to bring up the options available to you.

Are There Any Futures Markets Worth A Flutter At Bet365 Right Now?

I’ve already mentioned Tiger Roll is worth a look for the Grand National and in the screenshot above, you can see that the World Champions France are currently 11/2 to win the Euro 2020 Championships this summer. They are another decent futures bet I would consider.