What is a Bet Builder bet?

A Bet Builder is a type of accumulator bet, so it’s made up of two or more selections within the bet. Like with all accas, it’s a wager that needs all the selections in it to come good, for the bet as a whole to win.

But what is a Bet Builder compared to a traditional acca? The answer is that the selections making up a Bet Builder all relate to the same event, whereas a traditional acca is exactly the opposite: all the selections in it relate to different events.

In most cases, Bet Builders are only available on football matches, with the best football betting sites offering them for the vast majority of their matches, from the most high-profile leagues to the more obscure ones.

But lots of betting sites have started offering them for other sports as well, including tennis, basketball, rugby and cricket.

The first step is to decide which event you want to be betting on. Let’s say you wish to bet on a football match. Navigate to football, choose the competition, the match you wish to wager on and then head to the Bet Builder section within the event.

Which betting markets are available to include in a Bet Builder depends on the bookie in question. But as a rule of thumb, a Bet Builder at Bet365, one of the largest and most successful Sportsbooks, is very likely to have more betting markets and selections within those markets to include in the Bet Builder than you’d find at a much smaller bookie.

The next step is to choose two or more selections and put them together in your Bet Builder. The Sportsbook will automatically work out the odds for the Bet Builder and you’ll need all of them to win for the Bet Builder to win, the same as with any acca. 

Staying with football and let’s say you wish to bet on the Premier League match between Manchester United and Newcastle as a Sky Bet Bet Builder.

You decide you wish to have the following selections making up your Bet Builder at Sky Bet.

• Newcastle to win @ 2.2
• Manchester United to have the most booking points @ 2.5
• Diogo Dalot to be carded @ 4.5

Once you’ve added your selections, the Bet slip will automatically work out the odds of it and tell you that your three-way Bet Builder comes to odds of 24.75.

Then it’s a case of choosing your stake, just like you would with any other bet, and waiting for the action to unfold. 

Advantages

• As happens with all accas, you can win at huge odds. 
• You only need to do your research for one event rather than several ones, which is the case with other types of acca.
• Lots of sportsbooks give you free Bet Builders to place as a reward for placing a Bet Builder at an earlier stage. 
• The enjoyment of watching a Bet Builder unfold is greater than with other accas because they’re all based around the same event. 
• These days you have an endless number of selections to put in Bet Builders ranging from obvious ones like a team to win to stats-based ones like a player having x number of shots; so, plenty of choice. 

Disadvantages

• When selections are ‘related’, the odds on your Bet Builder are shorter than the odds you’d get by multiplying all the selections by one another, meaning smaller payouts.
• One losing selection will ruin the whole Bet Builder, meaning lots of near misses. 

As with any other type of bet or betting market, the Bet Builder rules will vary from one bookmaker to another. But here are the most common ones:

• It’s at the bookmaker’s discretion as to which sports they offer Bet Builders on, if at all. 
• The bookmaker may set a limit on the number of selections within the Bet Builder or a limit on the Bet Builder odds, so as to ensure it doesn’t have huge liabilities.
• Bookies can limit or stop certain customers from placing Bet Builders entirely, at their discretion, if they think the product is being abused. 
• A bonus’ terms and conditions may state that both qualifying bets that lead to a free bet, or the free bet itself, can’t be placed on Bet Builders. 
• At some bookies, if one of the selections in the Bet Builder is void, the whole Bet Builder will be void. At other bookies, a void selection is removed from the betting slip and the other selections run their natural course.
• For the likes of football and NFL matches, selections in the Bet Builder apply to the 90 minutes plus injury time, but not any extra time/overtime. 
• Not every market offered as a single will necessarily also be available to be included in a Bet Builder.
• Certain selections cannot be combined in the Bet Builder, at the bookmaker’s discretion.