Ladbrokes 5-A-Side: Innovative Football Bet Builder

5-A-Side from Ladbrokes is a new feature that nobody else can match right now, it effectively takes the bet builder feature for football to a new level by mixing in a fantasy sports element.

The idea is to pick a game, there are several each day covering high profile matches from the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A, French Ligue 1, Champions League, Europa League, etc.

You can then build a 5-a-side team within these matches.  The first thing to do is pick a formation.  The formation dictates what you are betting on, a balanced formation is a mixture between attack and defence, all out attack and park the bus are both self-explanatory, shoot on sight is aimed at strikers, rush goalie (no goalkeeper) and Gung-Ho (just one defender) – see below:

The next thing is to choose your stats, i.e. what you are betting on each player to do.  You can select:

• Keeper – to concede X goals
• Cruncher – to make X tackles
• Hacker – to get booked
• Baller – to make X passes
• Playmaker – to have X assists
• Sniper – to have X shots
• Sharp-Shooter – to have X shots on target
• Chancer – to have X shots outside the box
• Finisher – to score X goals

Once you’ve picked the stats you want to play then you simply add the players to those positions from the match in question.

You will then be given odds for the entire selection, which can be added to the bet slip and you can choose how much you want to stake; as with a conventional bet.

The markets appear in the betslip in the same way you might expect a bet builder to look (see example here).

All of these markets could be created through a conventional bet builder but it would take a lot more time to populate the bet slip.  The idea of doing it through a line-up is generally more appealing and makes the market more interesting.

5-a-side is also useful for instances where you don’t know what specific predictions you want to make for a match. The process of designing a formation and line-up based on how you think the game will be played (e.g. goal fest vs bore draw) is helpful for those that do not generally use bet builder but want to make more accurate predictions for certain matches.

If you would like to know more about Ladbrokes see our review, where we also have details of an welcome offer that can be claimed for new customers.  For more about 5-a-side visit Ladbrokes below.