The Europa League can be a strange realm for football betting. It consistently lives in the shadow of its bigger brother, the UEFA Champions League. The arrival of the UEFA Conference League in 2021 made the status of the Europa League even stranger. 

In a way, by UEFA adding a third-tier tournament, it devalued the importance of the Europa League as a prize. Arguably the Europa League is not a major target for any of Europe’s big teams. It often serves as a potential consolation prize for any that can’t deliver in the Champions League.

But what does that mean in terms of Europa League odds for betting? Before getting your wagers down, it is worth taking a few moments to size up the competition.

Unpredictable at its best

In most football tournament markets, like the winner of the Premier League or the UEFA Champions League, you can start to piece together the favourites before a single ball has been kicked in anger.

There’s usually a small batch of front-runners for any given competition coming through in what is a fairly clear picture. The usual suspects like Real Madrid, Manchester City and Bayern Munich will be in the leading pack for Champions League success, for example, in a given season. 

But things are very different for the UEFA Europa League. At the start of the group stage, the full layout of the season’s competition isn’t known. That’s because runners-up from the group stage, all have to face a team that’s dropped down from the Champions League group stage in a playoff round.

The Europa League outright

The nature of teams filtering down from the Champions League completely muddles the Europa League picture. The pre-tournament Europa League outright market may see teams like Arsenal, Feyenoord and Roma at the head of the market. But then all of a sudden when it comes to the knockout stage there is usually a big shake-up when fallen Champions League teams join. Sometimes it is big clubs who drop to the Europa League like Juventus and Barcelona did in the 2022/23 season.

It makes it a difficult tournament to predict with long-term bets. Therefore, a common approach is to wait until the start of the knockouts to consider outright winner options.

General unpredictability

Another fascinating aspect of UEFA Europa League betting is motivation. It’s not uncommon for bigger teams to send weaker starting line-ups into action during the group stage. That’s because the UEFA Europa League isn’t always the highest priority and it adds unpredictability to the results of fixtures. 

The strange status of the Europa League can also affect the knockout stage matches in the spring. An example scenario is Manchester United in the quarter-finals, but having a bigger priority in fighting for the Premier League title on the domestic scene. 

The latter is probably going to take precedence. The UEFA Europa League, with Thursday night fixtures, throws a lot of extra matches into an already congested season. Therefore, it’s not uncommon to see teams prioritising one competition over the other, depending on their situation and goals. 

The diversity of opposition

There is also a lot of diversity and variety of participating teams in the UEFA Europa League. Anyone that has followed their team in the competition, will likely have seen them go up against extremely unfamiliar opposition. 

Europa League teams come from different countries and regions and have different styles of play, tactics and strategies. Punters not having the familiarity of such diverse opposition, makes for trickier betting opportunities as it is hard to know what’s coming, especially if teams are not starting their strongest sides.

It could be a bigger club, getting unravelled on the night against an unknown quantity of a team that ‘parks the bus’ and plays a counter-attacking style. Moreover, some teams might have more experience and familiarity with playing in different weather conditions and stadiums than others.

The peculiarities

The Europa League is a competition full of surprises and drama. There is the upside that the unpredictability of the competition makes it exciting and challenging from a betting perspective. 

But it’s a tournament that generally needs a little patience applied when looking for long-term bets on the outright winner. As with all football betting, you should do your research, but strategies have to take in a lot of those peculiarities like clubs having bigger motivations elsewhere, and facing opposition that few really know about. 

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