Ever wondered what the best websites on niche markets like cards, corners, shots on target, or just general football statistics are? These statistics are becoming useful to sports bettors. This is because bookmakers put less focus on them compared to other markets like 1X2, teams to win the game, how many goals will be scored in the game, handicaps, and the under/over markets, etc.

You can watch Trademate's sports podcast host and pro sports bettor Alex Vella as he talks about these websites.

There are some publicly available websites that provide data that you can use to get these starts and aid your betting on these smaller markets, but keep in mind that these data are also used by bookmakers to influence their prices. Bear in mind that just by using some of these websites, which I’ll highlight, there’s a good chance that you’re not going to be able to beat the bookmakers long-term. That’s why, to gain an edge over the bookmakers, you must adopt other means as well as these websites. If you’re just a football fan or a weekend fun bettor, or you’re probably not interested in betting at all, I’m sure that either way, you’ll get some information from this article, it could be where to check for card statistics on your favorite teams, corner, statistics on the league, etc.

FOOTYSTATS

The first website on my list is Footystats. The only drawback on this website is that you’ll have to pay to get access to all the data, which costs £20 a month, so if you’re going to be subscribing to it, you’d have to be reasonably serious about your stats and also look to gain some edge in the betting market or to support your income. The bottom line is that if you’re going to be paying for something, it's best to take it seriously. Aside from the required subscription fee, Footystats is probably the best website for statistics.

On the website, you’ll see that its data correlates with the betting markets, and if you check the corner pages, it displays the average corner per match for all the teams in Europe. It displays data on specific teams that correlates to the betting markets. For example, if you pick a team in Sweden with a 13.4 on total corners, you can see that in the betting market, not over 9.5 happens about 80% of the time, and the website also displays the odds for over 9.5, which I’m quite sure 80% of the time would correlate with 1.2 in odds, so 9.5 plus to hit over 9.5, you’ll get 1.4, which is a value bet depending on the sample size. This 80% could be based on a couple of games, but if you have a decent sample size, it just shows that there’s an edge there for you, especially when it shows the corners for and the corners against. Another feature of this website that I like is that it displays upcoming matches so you can sort through them and focus on the one scheduled for the next day.

Since we're going outside of Europe, there's a chance that the website displays cards from teams all over the world, such as average card sets per match, leagues with the most yellow and red cards, and even all the players, in the card sets options. These will definitely supplement your betting if you’ve decided to take it more seriously, especially since there’s a cost to getting all the data.

Footystats is a great website if you want to take your betting more seriously, whether you're a professional or just looking for a part-time job to supplement your income, but the bottom line is that if you're going to pay for something, you should take it seriously.

FOOTCHARTS

FootCharts is the second website on my list. This might be my favorite website out of all the others, not because of its data on cards and corners but because it’s free and its interface is quite basic displaying the format of their statistics, also the style of graphs and charts is easy for the eye, and this especially for more visual people, and you have access on data on cards, corners, shots on target, etc.

One of my favorite aspects of this website is the correlation data. Although they may be slow to update for the current season, I assume that they will do so after 10 games or so. The correlation page depicts the connection between cards and fouls. The most interesting thing about this website is that you can go back through all previous seasons and maybe find some trends and data there for certain teams. This is just to give yourself an edge in the betting market.

THESTATSDONTLIE

Thestatsdontlie is the third website on my list. This website has a wide range of data for leagues all around the world. It has historical data for all leagues, but imagine some league data going back ten years. This website has data for lower-division leagues too, which is great. So, if I go to the website and select the 2017–18 English Premier League too, it will display historical data on everything from both teams scoring to both teams scoring in the first half—the data is that detailed. If you’re more interested in card statistics, on the website you can get data on red cards for, red cards against, yellow cards for, and yellow cards against, or maybe you’re interested in corner statistics; you can get corners for and against on the website.

This is a very good website if you’re really keen on delving deep into previous seasons and routing back into historical data, and it’s not just about niche markets like corners or cards; the website has other different markets that you can get historical data on. One of the things I don't like about this website is that if I want to look at the EPL for yellow for and against, it's standard, and I can't then filter through, say, the 22/23 season; I can't then filter from previous seasons; I'll have to go into historical data. This is an area that is highlighted by the other websites earlier mentioned.

I'm not sure if you can get their predictions on matches, good or bad, but you do have to pay a small token for the subscription to get those data, similar to Footystats, where you have to pay to get certain data from the website.

Overall, if you want to get historical data, this is the website to look at. I will emphasize, however, that when using historical data, you should be mindful of how far back you are willing to go; for example, you should look at yellow card statistics and how the league has changed in the last ten years. Because you have the historical data for the EPL, you should consider the changes, like in the referees and the way they officiate games, or if they’ve become stricter, or maybe they let things go more in previous seasons and didn’t give out many cards; these are things you’ll have to factor in. So when you’re potentially building a model in this case, you might want to consider if the previous season's data is relevant to the current season where you’re trying to bet, or maybe it’s a completely different game and some rules may have changed just like the VAR, which could play a part in it. These are important things to look out for when you’re looking through historical data and deciding how far you want to go.

Some people might be asking how they can use these in the betting market and what it looks like when placing cards, corners, and shots on target kinds of bets. I’ll highlight some ways you can implement that data into your betting and what it looks like on a betting website.

Using Bet365 as an example, it is one of the most popular bookmakers around that everyone has access to around the world, so there are a couple of ways you can implement or place cards and corner bets by clicking on the tabs where you can go over 4.5 cards, bet on players to be booked, and it goes all the way down to cards, corners, handicap, etc. As earlier stated, you've got the over 9.5 market that’s very prominent. In these markets, you can put some things together or maybe you're an expert in cards and corners, and in a Merseyside derby, Everton will probably be on the back foot for most of the game, which means they'll foul Liverpool most times during the course of the game to stop their momentum and get a couple of cards. For corners, I think Liverpool will be on the front foot for most of the game, so I’ll go with Liverpool to get at least 5 corners, and now for all those things to happen, I’ve built myself a bet here for 2.15 in odds.

Now, I’m not saying this is a good bet, a bad bet, or a neutral EV bet; this is just an avenue that you as a sports bettor can go down if you think you have an edge in this market. So, potentially, you can look at all of these things and just go with Everton getting at least three cards, the entire game getting at least four cards, and Liverpool getting at least four corners; the true odds on that might be 2.0 or so, but you've got a decent edge on it, which means we're getting a value at 2.15 with this bet. So these are the things you want to potentially look out for if you’re going to model this kind of betting.

In conclusion, and like I said at the start of this article, you've got to be very mindful of these types of markets. Although the bookmakers may know less about these niche markets, because they know less, they put more margin on their products, which gets them out of the situation where they can lose money in these markets and makes it harder for you to beat them. So you have to keep all these in mind when betting on niche markets.

This concludes my article on the top 3 best websites for football prop stats and betting. If there are some other websites I have missed, which I’m sure there are, please make sure you comment on them below and let us know your favorite websites for more niche markets like cards, corners, and shots on target.