Predicting the score is one of the most fun parts of soccer, especially when you get it right in a bet with friends. But before betting on a soccer match, it’s best to have a general idea about the most common soccer scores in the game, right?
While soccer is a sport that can be unpredictable and full of surprises, it is still possible to understand the main trends in this game, observe the common scores and pick the most likely scenario out of raw soccer data, and who knows?
Maybe your next score prediction will be a winning wager!
What Is The Most Common Soccer Score?
To get a better idea about the most common score in soccer, we’re going to look at the numbers from 5 seasons (2015/16-2019/20). We want to see if certain scores were considerably more common than others over that time period so we could figure out the most accurate bet to place on the Premier League and Championship.
While the most common scoreline is a 1-0 win (between 2015/16 and 2019/20), we still want to know how often certain scores tend to occur.
This common score is mostly due to the “play safe” approach followed by many teams, which makes the number of risky attacks lower in the top leagues.
Fans know that 6-2 is not really a common soccer score, while 2-2, 0-0, and other similar outcomes appear much more frequently. But why exactly do we recall them? Is it due to the fact that they occur frequently or scores or because they are interesting scores in soccer?
We will look at the times a given score was the most frequent for each of the five seasons.
Most Common Soccer Scores (2015/16-2019/20)
| Season | Score (Championship) | Frequency (Championship) | % of Games (Championship) | Score (Premier League) | Frequency (Premier League) | % of Games (Premier League) |
| 2015/16 | 2-1 | 102 | 18.48% | 1-0 | 70 | 18.42% |
| 2016/17 | 1-0 | 110 | 19.93% | 1-0 | 59 | 15.53% |
| 2017/18 | 1-0 | 99 | 17.93% | 1-0 | 67 | 17.63% |
| 2018/19 | 1-0 | 99 | 17.93% | 2-0 | 67 | 17.62% |
| 2019/20 | 1-0 | 114 | 20.65% | 2-1 | 62 | 16.32% |
| Total | 1-0 | 515 | 18.66% | 1-0 | 306 | 16.11% |
Between 2015/16 and 2019/20, a 1-0 win appears to be the most common score in three out of five seasons of the Premier League and four out of five seasons of the Championship.
Over the course of those five seasons, this was the score on a total of 821 occasions. Considering that there were a number of 4660 games played during that time, this suggests that around one match out of every six or so ended in a 1-0 victory.
2-1 was the second most common score, and it was the most prevalent score in the 2019/20 Premier League season and 2015/16 Championship season.
In the 2018/19 Premier League season, the most frequently occurring score is 2-0. During that season, Arsenal won more than 30 percent of their home matches 2-0.
Is a Team More Likely to Win When Home or Away?
To answer this question, we need to first take a look at the following table, which displays the home and away correct scores between 2015/16 and 2019/20 in the Premier League and Championship:
| Score | Home (Championship) | Away (Championship) | Home (Premier League) | Away (Premier League) |
| 1-0 | 296 (10.72%) | 219 (7.93%) | 181 (9.53%) | 125 (6.58%) |
| 2-0 | 203 (7.36%) | 135 (4.89%) | 163 (8.58%) | 89 (4.68%) |
| 2-1 | 266 (9.64%) | 199 (7.21%) | 153 (8.05%) | 134 (7.05%) |
| 3-0 | 114 (4.13%) | 58 (2.10%) | 83 (4.37%) | 56 (2.95%) |
| 3-1 | 97 (3.51%) | 74 (2.68%) | 95 (5.00%) | 54 (2.84%) |
| 3-2 | 75 (2.72%) | 47 (1.70%) | 41 (2.16%) | 35 (1.84%) |
| 4-0 | 38 (1.38%) | 16 (0.58%) | 47 (2.47) | 25 (1.32%) |
What we can conclude from this table is definitely interesting. There is clearly a home advantage since each of the victories is more likely to occur at home than away.
The discrepancy is least, however, with 2-1 and 3-2 score lines (i.e. both teams scoring with a one-goal margin of victory).
A 1-0 home win is the most common score in the Championship. However, a 2-1 home win is the second most common, followed by 2-0, and a 1-0 away win comes in fourth place.
The most common score in the Premier League is a 1-0 home win, followed by a 2-0 home win, and finally a 2-1 home win. The away victories follow, with 2-1 victories being more prevalent than 1-0 victories.
Concerning our first question, a team is likelier to win (especially with a 1-0 score) when home as opposed to away. So, the visiting Premier League sides must work a little harder to win, with the home side scoring more often and requiring a second goal from the visitors to secure an away win.
But we still can’t call this a general rule since the number of 1-0 away wins in the Championship (2015) was relatively close to the number of home wins of the same score.
What about Draws – How Many Are There?
In each of the five seasons between 2015/16 and 2019/20, the most common draw score was 1-1. There were 563 1-1 draw in the Premier League and Championship throughout that span, with a lot of fluctuation between seasons.
Finally, keep in mind that we’re not eliminating the possibility of the occurrence of other scores.
Instead, we’re just emphasizing the fact that certain soccer scores occur more frequently than others, which might just be that one thing that helps you take your betting game to the next level!
