As a race, we do try to make things easier for ourselves when possible. If we are going to be walking through a muddy field, rather than wear a pair of flip flops or some training shoes, 
most of us would opt for a sturdy pair of boots or perhaps even a pair of wellingtons.
This endless quest to find the simplest, easiest and most efficient option plays a central role in everything we do. Nobody wants to take the longer, more arduous and difficult option when something much easier, simpler and quicker is available with the same result.
So with that in mind, why not make your online betting experience that much quicker and simpler? If you are betting with any of the top providers on Instant Sports Money, be that Paddy Power, SkyBet or Bet365 Sport, then there’s a good chance you already are using each sites system of betting coupons to place a bet. Maybe without even realising you are doing it at all.
However, even if you are, it is a good idea to get yourself clued up as to how betting coupons work on these sites and why they can help you place bets more efficiently.
What are betting coupons?
If you are familiar with the old-style football pools coupon, or a National Lottery style ticket, then a betting coupon is essentially the same thing as one of these. It groups together a number of selections from similar markets and puts them together in one easy to find list.
Coupons are great not just for placing single bets on certain markets, but also for navigating around sites to find the bet you want, as well as quickly and easily being able to place multiple bets or accumulators.
They are especially useful when they filter out selections that are not part of an offer (such as filtering out matches that are not part of the Bet365 Euro Soccer Bonus offer for example). This then leaves the selections that are part of the offer so a punter knows if they make their selections from that coupon, they will qualify for the offer.
Almost all betting sites use coupons to organise their bets for ease of reference for their punters (even if it doesn’t appear that the site is using the term). Here’s how the three partner sites with Instant Sports Money all use coupons as part of their betting service.
How to use Paddy Power coupons
Paddy Power don’t have a bespoke ‘coupons’ section as such, but the entire site is designed through linking a number of coupons together for the respective sports and betting markets.
The Quick Links option down the left hand side of the home page offers you a choice of pre-defined coupons including some based on sports and sporting events (Football Betting, Premier League, Horse Racing, Rugby World Cup etc) as well as those based on certain promotions (Acca Insurance Coupon) as well as having a coupon expressly for In Play betting too.
In the A-Z betting section underneath, when you click on a sport (such as the NFL), this brings up a list of different coupons based on the different types of game and/or betting markets available for that sport.
In the example above for the NFL, there is a Handicap Coupon (which lists each game for the forthcoming weekend with each team given a plus or minus points handicap), there is also a Match Coupon which is a straight bet on which team will win without a handicap enforced.
To drill down and get into other bets, you can use any of these coupons as a starting point and then click on the green ‘More Bets’ option which then takes you to all the available bets for your chosen game. Again, some of these may well be presented on individual coupons, or simply as a long list of bets relating to that game one after the other.
Keep an eye out too on Paddy Power for any special offers or Money Back Specials that may apply to certain betting markets on a coupon. These are often displayed in red and using these can help punters obtain a little added insurance or extra value for their bet.
What is SkyBet’s approach to betting coupons?
SkyBet’s approach to using coupons is very similar to Paddy Power in that they don’t have a single coupons section on the site as such, but all the betting information, regardless of how you navigate to it, is presented in a series of coupons, varying in size and length depending on the sport and markets being investigated.
For example, quicking on the Top Sports link for football, brings up a number of different coupons. There’s the Live Betting option which lists all the live football matches for which in play betting is available right now. This is located at the top of the page.
Underneath that is the Featured Matches coupon which lists the matches that are coming up in the next day that feature the biggest teams from around the world. This can alter quite significantly depending on which teams are in action.
After this is the Next Football Matches coupon, which is simply a chronological listing of all the matches that SkyBet offer markets for which are kicking off over the next few hours.
Underneath these two sections are a Special Bets section, which lists some of the more unusual bets available with SkyBet and more interesting to us is the Football Coupons section which allows you to filter your football betting options via a considerable number of different parameters including:
- All Matches by Day
- UK and Ireland Long List
- European Elite List
- Rest of the World Elite List
- Both Teams to Score Long List
- Both Teams to Score UK List
- Full Time Result and Both Teams to Score List
- Bankers Coupon
- Goal Frenzy Coupon – Team to Score 2+ Goals
- Over/Under 2.5 Goals Coupon and many others
Underneath this section is a list of football competitions which brings up lists of bets from matches in that stated competition from both England and Scotland as well as Europe and the Rest of the World.
SkyBet extensively uses coupons to allow its punters to find the bets they need to place quickly and easily and as sites go, it is one of the most user-friendly when it comes to betting either from a PC or a mobile device.
Coupons available on Bet365 Sport
Although Bet365 Sport organises its betting information in the same way Paddy Power and SkyBet does (via a series of coupons), the site is different in that it also has coupon sections throughout the site.
The most obvious one is on the front page which lists the sites Top Coupons. These are the four most popular coupons used by punters on Bet365 and these are namely UK Lists and International Lists for Football bets, Full List of Tennis Bets and Next 3 Races coupon for horseracing betting.
This is very useful as it gives people access to the most popular coupons with the most popular bets directly from the top of the home page on the site.
However, Bet365 also uses coupons extensively throughout the majority of its sporting markets. Clicking on any sport in the A-Z will bring up a list of options and usually top of the list is the number of different sporting coupons available for that sport.
Clicking on Tennis for example brings up a huge list of Match Coupons from a wide range of events taking place at all levels of Tennis, all over the world. On the day we compiled the research for this, there were no fewer than 60 individual Tennis Match Coupons available on Bet365 alone.
Although you may think of your preferred sports betting platform as a site, in reality, it is likely that this site is organised into a series of navigable coupons to allow you to find the betting markets you want to back quickly and easily. Understanding how coupons work and how you can use them makes betting quicker, faster and more enjoyable.