Footy Star – Profits Opposing The Recreational Punter!

Following on from a very successful 9-month period as a Free SBC Tipster, Footy Star is now accepting subscriptions to its new Premium Service to access its BTTS – No market tips.

Available as a Free SBC Tipster between June 2024 and February 2025, Footy Star’s unique strategy made 137.52 points profit from 822 bets  at 16.72% ROI during this period. This correlates nicely with its long-term record dating back to 2022, where Footy Star has made a 15% ROI from 2,524 bets.

Reviewed in full in SBC Issue 149 from February 2025 and with a keen following due to its superb record of success long-term, you can now subscribe to Footy Star with several discounts available for SBC members.

Click here to view the subscription options and to join the service.

Footy Star’s BTTS = NO Edge

When betting in football goal markets, it is well known that the average punter likes to see action and this results in disproportionate levels of wagering on goals to be scored. Both teams to score, over 2.5 goals, ‘BTTS’ paired up with one of the teams to win and other high-scoring outcomes are extremely popular and the majority of the bookies’ action is taken on this side of lines.

As with any value-driven strategy, following the crowd (when it is recreational!) is rarely an optimal strategy. Footy Star do the opposite. With a focus on backing ‘Both Teams To Score – No’ for the majority of their bets, they have built up an extremely impressive record since 2022, as this table showcases:

Where Does The Value Come From?

With this bias in the market as a starting point, Gianluca, the brains behind Footy Star, set out to build models to find the best value in the goals markets. We asked him about his service and this is what he told us:

‘My tips are based on value, meaning that I do not necessarily look for sure winners but rather look for odds that are higher than the actual probability of the event. I started producing tips in September 2021 and my service has improved and changed its face over time. My original service was based on a high volume of tips, with modest ROI. After having applied a more selective filter, in May 2022 I created “Footy Star” on the Tipstrr platform, which was named as “Best emerging Football Tipster” in 2022 and featured in the second position of the “Best 2023 Football Tipster” ranking.

I apply a statistical model to identify my selections. I am constantly exploring new markets (e.g. I am trying to improve in the Draw market) and new techniques (I am studying new predictive models, including machine learning), but the Footy Star is, by far, my most profitable model.

My system is based on the statistical analysis of the historical data; I derive my bets from a comparison between a “value index” computed by my model and the odds offered by the bookmakers. After years of analysis of the market, I reverse-engineered the data in order to imagine how the bookmakers compute the odds, and I discovered that there is a correlation between what I define “primary markets” and “derived markets”. The primary markets are the ones that the bookmakers analyse to produce the odds; the derived markets are the ones whose odds are computed based on the primary markets. This correlation is a mathematical law that works well in most cases, but there are “singularities” for which this mathematical correlation is inaccurate. This is where I look for to find valuable bets.’

Statistical models that have proven to be successful over 2,500+ bets, exploiting a key bias in the goal markets and a reflective tipster who is constantly looking to improve – Footy Star ticks a lot of boxes!

The Record

Footy Star joined the SBC as a free tipster in early June 2024 and prior to that had been active on the Tipstrr platform from May 2022. If you would like to view a line-by-line record for Footy Star that covers bets from this whole period you can do so via this spreadsheet.

In summary, the key takeaways from the data include:

  • 2,524 bets have been advised
  • 1,041 bets have won, with 48 bets being voided (for things like rearrangements or weather) and 1,435 losing
  • The strike rate for bets where games were played is 42.04%
  • The average price of selections is 2.77 (a bit bigger than 7/4 in ‘old money’)
  • Return On Investment from following these bets (using flat staking) stands at 15.05%

This is a table that summarises performance by year:

Bookmakers, Sharp Bookmakers & Exchanges

All bets are sent out with prices cited from soft bookmakers such as William Hill, Paddy Power/Betfair, Bet Victor and Unibet being popular outlets for recommended prices.

Gianluca previously utilised prices from sharp bookmakers (such as Pinnacle) but with practicality essential, he altered this to offer prices from widely available outlets.

It is worth noting that you may be able to get better prices for selections with sharp bookmakers and/or on exchanges. The likes of Pinnacle will offer plenty of the markets that Footy Star finds value selections in, whilst exchange value will very much dependent on how prestigious the league is and whether there is the requisite liquidity available. Despite this, having access to soft bookmakers (and ideally Paddy Power and/or Betfair) is essential to maximise returns from the service as this is where the value odds are quoted from and what the historical record is based on.

SBC Review

In conjunction with Footy Star’s Premium Launch in February 2025, we carried out a detailed analysis of the record to get a fuller understanding of the edge and the practicalities of following Gianluca’s bets in.

Some key takeaways from our analysis included:

  • The service is extremely consistent, with 27 of 34 months producing profits, despite average odds of 7/4+
  • Unit-win staking can be deployed to smooth out variance and adjust betting levels to stay under LTL limits
  • A Paddy Power or Betfair account is a plus when following Footy Star as they often offer the best odds

You can read about these intricacies of the service in SBC Magazine #149: February 2025. To access that review, please log in and visit ‘Publications’ in the Members’ Area or subscribe here to read our in-depth analysis (and have access to a Member discount – see below!).

Subscribe Now – Only Available Via SBC

You can subscribe now to Footy Star with the following options:

SBC Member Rates

To take advantage of these discounted prices, an active membership to the Smart Betting Club is required.

  • 1 month subscription @ £40 + VAT
  • 3 month subscription @ £105 + VAT
  • 6 month subscription @ £175 + VAT
  • 12 month subscription @ £289 + VAT (Best Value long-term)

 

Normal Rates

  • 1 month subscription @ £45 + VAT
  • 3 month subscription @ £120 + VAT
  • 6 month subscription @ £205 + VAT
  • 12 month subscription @ £329 + VAT

 

SBC Member Discounted Rates Links

If you hold an SBC membership, login with your username/password and return to this page to discover the discounted payment links.

If you are not an SBC member and wish to join to access these savings, Subscribe to SBC now and then return to this page to access the discounted links.

 

SBC Non-Member Rates 

If you don’t hold an active Smart Betting Club membership, you can join via the following payment links:

12 Month recurring* subscription – £329 + VAT per year
Click Here To Subscribe Now!

6 month recurring* subscription – £205 + VAT per 6 months
Click Here To Subscribe Now!

3 month recurring* subscription – £120 + VAT per 3 months
Click Here To Subscribe Now!

1 month recurring* subscription – £45 + VAT per month
Click Here To Subscribe Now!

 

*Please note that all membership payments are taken on an automatic recurring basis. You can cancel the recurring payments at anytime or simply ask us to do this on your behalf at any point. 

 

Service Nuts and Bolts

About: Footy Star focuses on the goals markets in football leagues from across the world. ‘BTTS – No’ is by far their most common bet as they look to find games where (at least) one team does NOT score.

Method of Bet Supply: Tips are sent out via Telegram in the following format:

Fixture: Latvia>Virsliga>Riga FC – RFS
Betfair @2.3
PaddyPower @2.25
Betway @2.25

Here you can see the country, league and game, as well as the main ‘soft bookmakers’ offering the best current odds. By searching around in the betting market, you will often find better odds – especially with sharp bookmakers, exchanges and bet brokers.

Bet Timing: What time and day are bets sent? Tips are delivered between 9pm and 11pm (UK time). During weekends with a large number of available fixtures, sometimes tips arrive later than 11pm (especially on Friday and Saturday nights).

Bet Type: Most bets advised are for BTTS – No. Other bet types are employed but they are normally a derivation of this strategy (opposing goals).

Bookmakers: Tips are advised using multiple major UK bookmakers, with the price accompanied by which firm(s) is offering that price. Prices are not taken from sharp bookmakers or exchanges, but are often available depending on the level of the competition and the requisite liquidity.

Number of Bets: Around 80 tips can be expected in a busy month, with quieter months normally seeing between 30 and 40 selections sent out to followers. Saturdays and Sundays see the vast majority of the action.

Staking: A flat staking plan has been employed by Footy Star so far and this is how we will be measuring performance going forward. If you would like to adopt a more blended staking plan (e.g. based on the odds), then initial analysis from the bare data suggests that this would still perform excellently whilst improving Return On Capital (ROC). SBC Magazine #

Betting Bank Advice: We recommend starting with a 100-points bank.

Gianluca has also asked to include his advice around staking, which is as follows:

1. Decide your starting stake and say that it is equal to 1 point. Start with 100-points bank.

2. Keep betting the same stake until your bank reaches 150 points. Do not change the stake if the bank decreases.

3. Once your bank reaches 150 points, put 50 points aside: this is your reserve bank and pretend it does not exist unless you are in trouble. Your new bank starts again at 100 points.

4. Never go below your starting stake. But from now on, if the bank increases, you can increase the stake as well (dividing your current bank by 100).

5. Every X months, if the bank has increased remember to withdraw some money for you to spend as you prefer!