Any Other Score Bet: Meaning, Examples and How It Works

Bookmakers can also build these markets differently. In my checks of William Hill, Sky Bet and Paddy Power, I found two different ways of grouping the remaining scores.

What Does Any Other Score Mean and How Does It Work?

Think of Any Other Score as a group of possible results rather than one exact score.

For example, a bookmaker might offer:

• If Team A wins 2-0, the first group wins.
• If Team A wins 3-1, the second group wins.
• If the match ends 4-0 and no other named group covers 4-0, it can fall under Any Other Score.

This does not mean the bookmaker did not expect a 4-0 result. It only means that 4-0 was not included in one of the other named groups in that market.

You should therefore read the whole market before deciding which scores are covered.

Real Example: William Hill Any Other Score

For this guide, I checked the pre-match Arsenal vs Coventry markets at William Hill, Sky Bet and Paddy Power before the match scheduled for 21 August 2026. I compared their individual Correct Score and grouped Correct Score markets and checked the available official settlement rules.

William Hill gives the clearest example of a single catch-all Any Other Score selection.

For Arsenal vs Coventry, its Correct Score Group Betting market contained:

• Arsenal to win 1-0, 2-0 or 2-1
• Arsenal to win 3-0, 3-1 or 3-2
• Draw 1-1, 2-2 or 3-3
• Coventry to win 1-0, 2-0 or 2-1
• Coventry to win 3-0, 3-1 or 3-2
• Any Other Score – 2.90

William Hill’s official football rules list the same Correct Score Groups structure, including Any other score.

This makes settlement easy to understand:

William Hill therefore uses one residual selection for results outside the five named groups.

How Bookmakers Structure Any Other Score Differently

William Hill used a different structure from Sky Bet and Paddy Power for the same Arsenal vs Coventry fixture.

William Hill combined all remaining qualifying results into one Any Other Score selection.

Sky Bet and Paddy Power instead split the remaining scores into three groups:

• Arsenal to win Any Other Score
• Any Other Draw
• Coventry to win Any Other Score

The two bookmakers used the same basic structure, but their odds were different:

This gives us two different ways of building the market:

Sky Bet’s official football rules describe Correct Score Group Betting as a grouped selection of match scorelines, settled on the result after 90 minutes.

Paddy Power’s football rules state that football bets are normally settled over 90 minutes unless the market says otherwise.

The main lesson is that the structure of Any Other Score can differ between bookmakers. Even when two sportsbooks use the same structure, as Sky Bet and Paddy Power did here, they can price the grouped outcomes differently.

The Paddy Power market also gives a clear example of how to work out which scores belong to each group.

For an Arsenal win, Paddy Power offered:

• 1-0, 2-0 or 3-0
• 2-1, 3-1 or 4-1
• 3-2, 4-2 or 5-2
• Arsenal to win Any Other Score

So:

• 2-0 belongs to the first group.
• 3-1 belongs to the second.
• 4-2 belongs to the third.
• 4-0 falls under Arsenal to win Any Other Score.
• 5-1 also falls under Arsenal to win Any Other Score.

Draws were split into:

• Draw 0-0 or 1-1
• Any Other Draw

This means scores such as 2-2, 3-3 and 4-4 fall into Any Other Draw.

One wording detail can also confuse beginners. In team-specific groups, the score may be shown from the selected team’s point of view.

For example, Coventry to win 2-1 means Coventry score two goals and Arsenal score one. In the usual home-away format, the result would be written Arsenal 1-2 Coventry.

Correct Score vs Correct Score Group Betting

A normal Correct Score market and a Correct Score Group market are different bets.

With Correct Score, you choose one exact result:

Arsenal 4-0 Coventry

With grouped score betting, several possible results can be covered by one selection:

Any Other Score

This distinction is important because the same result can appear in both markets in different ways.

When I checked William Hill, Arsenal 4-0 was available as an individual Correct Score bet at 9.50.

In the separate Correct Score Group Betting market, however, 4-0 was not included in any of the five named groups. It therefore fell under Any Other Score at 2.90.

This is why “Any Other” does not mean “A score the bookmaker does not offer”. It means a score outside the named groups in that particular grouped market.

Does Extra Time Count?

For the football markets checked for this guide, settlement is based on normal match time rather than extra time.

• William Hill states that Correct Score Groups are settled using normal time plus stoppage time, while extra time does not count.
• Sky Bet states that Correct Score Group Betting is settled on the result after 90 minutes
• Paddy Power also uses 90 minutes plus referee-added stoppage time for standard football bets unless the individual market says otherwise.

So if a cup match is 2-2 after 90 minutes and finishes 3-2 after extra time, a standard 90-minute Correct Score market is settled using 2-2.

Markets specifically labelled for extra time can work differently.

How Any Other Score Odds and Value Work

Any Other Score does not automatically have high odds. This was clear from the Arsenal vs Coventry markets I checked:

William Hill’s price was relatively short because its single Any Other Score option covered a large number of remaining results.

Sky Bet and Paddy Power divided those outcomes into smaller home-win, draw and away-win groups. Their Arsenal options were still relatively short, while Coventry’s were large longshots.

The market name alone therefore tells you very little about the price.

Odds can also be converted into a simple raw implied probability.

For decimal odds:

Raw implied probability = 1 ÷ decimal odds

William Hill’s price of 2.90 gives:

1 ÷ 2.90 ≈ 34.5%

But 34.5% should not be treated as the true probability.

Bookmakers include a margin in their prices. When the raw implied probabilities of all selections are added together, the total normally exceeds 100%. This excess is known as the overround.

Koning and Zijm explain the relationship between betting odds, implied probability and overround in their peer-reviewed paper, Betting market efficiency and prediction in binary choice models.

For beginners, the important distinction is:

Suppose a selection is priced at 10.00.

Its simple break-even probability is:

1 ÷ 10.00 = 10%

If you estimate its real chance at only 7%, the price would not look attractive.

If you could estimate the real chance at 12%, the same odds could represent positive expected value.

The difficult part is estimating the real probability accurately.

Research by Hegarty and Whelan found a favourite-longshot bias in fixed-odds football markets, with lower-probability bets producing worse average bettor returns in the markets studied. Their paper, Market Structure and Prices in Online Betting Markets: Theory and Evidence, is not specifically about Any Other Score, so it does not prove that every high-priced score bet is poor value. It does support the broader warning that a bigger possible payout should not be confused with a better price.

Why Exact Scores Are Hard to Predict

Exact football scores are probability outcomes, and their chances are not equal.

A 4-0 win for a strong favourite may be much more likely than a 4-0 win for a major outsider.

Researchers have modelled football scores using statistical methods for decades. A well-known study by Dixon and Coles used Poisson-based modelling on English league and cup matches while allowing team strength to change over time. Their paper, Modelling Association Football Scores and Inefficiencies in the Football Betting Market, was also directly connected to football betting-market pricing.

You do not need to use a statistical model to understand Any Other Score.

The useful lesson is that factors such as attacking strength, defensive strength and the teams involved affect the probability of different scorelines.

This also helps explain why Arsenal and Coventry Any Other Score selections had such different prices in the markets checked for this guide.

Statistical models can help estimate probabilities, but they do not make exact results easy or certain to predict.

Risks and Limitations

Any Other Score can cover several results, but that does not make those outcomes easy to price accurately.

Correct-score betting is a complex market because you are dealing with many possible final scores rather than only a home win, draw or away win.

Research provides a useful warning. Philip Newall’s paper Live-odds gambling advertising and consumer protection discusses evidence showing that historical Correct Score markets could carry substantially higher bookmaker margins than simple home-draw-away markets.

The paper also reports research in which football fans had more difficulty producing consistent probability estimates for correct scores than for basic match-result outcomes.

These findings do not tell us the margin on a particular Any Other Score bet today. They do show why a large potential payout should not be treated as proof of good value.

There are also practical limits:

• bookmakers can group the same type of market differently;
• a grouped selection can contain many scorelines with very different individual probabilities;
• settlement rules matter;
• odds include bookmaker margin;
• recent score patterns do not guarantee similar future results.

Any Other Score is therefore better understood as a way of grouping correct scores, not as a betting strategy by itself.