EFL Play-Off Final Betting: Key Trends and Statistics

The semi-finals are contested across two legs, home and away, with the two successful teams meeting at Wembley Stadium at the end of the month. The playoffs are a hugely profitable avenue for the triumphant team with the Championship finale often described as the most lucrative football match in the world. Promotion to the wealthiest domestic league in sport brings unparalleled fortunes with many clubs able to transform their squads and make significant changes to their infrastructure.

Play Off Betting

The playoff betting markets are always hugely competitive and the bookmakers often find it difficult to predict the outcome. There is always plenty of interest in the EFL playoffs with every single game being televised in the UK and it even tends to capture the attention of those football fans who infrequently watch anything other than the Premier League. If you enjoy betting on soccer, then you’ll probably have kept an eye on the markets and will have noticed that most betting sites tend to price up the promotion markets months in advance. However, the odds will be re-jigged once the playoff participants have been confirmed.

Naturally, the market tends to price up the team that finishes in third place (or fourth place in League Two) as the favourites for promotion. In the Championship and League One, 36.1% of teams who finished in this spot have been promoted. In the second tier, the fourth and fifth-placed sides have been successful 22.2% of the time with the sixth-placed finisher having reached the Premier League just seven times across the last 35 campaigns (19.4%)

Although the third-place finishes still tend to dominate in League One, those outfits who sneak into the final playoff position have a decent record and have been successful 22.2% of the time. It was a similar story in League Two where 25% of the teams finishing seventh have been promoted including Crawley, who had been priced up as firm outsiders by the bookmakers ahead of their unlikely success at Wembley in 2024.

Recent Form

Momentum is an important consideration to make when placing a bet on the playoff final. Punters tend to favour sides who have been able to put together back-to-back victories and those are seemingly functioning as a unit. Although there have been several high-profile examples of this playing out, including Blackpool’s magnificent run of seven wins in nine matches which enabled them to sneak into the sixth spot, teams can often defy poor form to lift themselves for these crucial encounters.

Generally speaking, recent form is important in the Championship and League One, however, it can be discarded when it comes to betting on the League Two playoffs. Four of the last five winners of the second tier’s playoff final had collected 12+ points from their final six matches with 2023-24 winners Southampton being the exception (9 points). In League One, each of the last three successful sides had accrued 13 or more points from their final six outings with the beaten finalists from 2022 and 2023 having also amassed an impressive total of at least 13 points.

It is a completely different story in League Two with last season’s two play-off finalists having collected just 13 points between them heading into the showpiece event. Only one of the last four winners has managed double figures from their final six fixtures.

Goals Trends

Naturally, second legs tend to do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to goals. In the first legs of the 2023-24 Championship playoff semi-finals, both fixtures ended 0-0, yet there were eight goals evenly spread across the two second legs. Four of the last six semi-finals have also been drawn, suggesting that there is a high chance of the two teams using this first meeting as an opportunity to suss one another out.

There have also been some memorable second legs in League One fairly recently including Sheffield Wednesday’s stunning comeback to overturn a 4-0 deficit against Peterborough in 2023.

Nevertheless, the big occasions tend to be slow-burners with both teams unwilling to show their hand too early. Ten of the last eleven Championship playoff finals have finished with fewer than three goals and at least one of the teams has failed to hit the target in nine of the last twelve.

It’s a similar story in League One with at least one of the finalists drawing a blank in each of the last three. However, five of the last ten have featured at least three goals, so if you’re searching for goals, it may be best to drop down to the third tier.

Finally, four of the last ten League Two playoff finals have featured three or more goals with at least one of the teams failing to notch in five of the last six. The bookmakers are likely to price the goals markets prohibitively. However, “BTTS – No” may be a better option for punters looking to oppose goals.

It’s also worth noting that there has been a first-half goal scored in four of the last five League Two finals. This has also been the case in six of the last seven for League One and in each of the last four from the Championship, so backing a correct score of 0-0 in the half-time market would not have been a particularly profitable route for bettors in recent seasons.