How to Bet on Germany’s Basketball Bundesliga

The Basketball Bundesliga (BBL), also known for sponsorship reasons as the easyCredit BBL, is the highest-level professional basketball competition in Germany. The Deutscher Basketball Bund organizes it and it is one of the most important European basketball leagues. The league was created in 1939 but was quickly suspended due to the Second World War, restarting in 1947. In 1966, the league was made official.

The BBL season has 2 phases, a regular phase, in which the 18 teams that make up the league face each other one by one in 2 round-trip matches. Then, the top eight teams go to the second phase, the playoffs, with the top team playing the 8th, the 2nd playing the 7th, and so on. It is played in a best of five format and the teams are knocked out until there is a winner.

The teams currently playing in the league are Brose Bamberg, Medi Bayreuth, Alba Berlin, Telekom Baskets Bonn, Basketball Löwen Braunschweig, Niners Chemnitz, Crailsheim Merlins, Skyliners Frankfurt, BG Göttingen, Hamburg Towers, MLP Academics Heidelberg, Riesen Ludwigsburg, Mitteldeutscher BC, Bayern Munich, Baskets Oldenburg, Rostock Seawolves, Ratiopharm Ulm, and s.Oliver Würzburg.

How to Bet on the German Basketball Bundesliga

There are a huge number of possible bets on the German Basketball Bundesliga. Here we will explain the most popular of them so that you know how to get started.

Outright Bets

Outright bets are bets where you select who you think will be the winner of the league. They are long-term bets since the winner isn't known until the competition is over. They are usually made before the start of a season, but you can place them once it has already begun.

For example, you could bet on Bayern Munich to win the league this year. If you bet before the season starts, you may find long odds. However, if you place the bet after the team has already won its first two games, then you will find that the odds are drastically shorter.

Game Result Bets

Game results are bets are on which team will win the game. In basketball, games cannot end in a draw. For example, if Skyliners Frankfurt and Niners Chemnitz play, you bet on which team you think will win. If you bet on Skyliners Frankfurt and they win, you take the money. If Niners Chemnitz wins you lose the bet.

Game Handicap Bets

These bets give a team a points handicap (e.g. 8.5 or 9for betting purposes. For example, if Alba Berlin, the current champion, faces the newly promoted Rostock Seawolves, it may be assumed that Alba Berlin will win by a considerable difference. For that reason, you can make a bet on Alba Berlin with a handicap of -10.5. This means that in our bet, Alba Berlin starts losing by 10.5 points, so the only way for us to win the bet is for Alba Berlin to win with a difference of 11 points or more.

Game Winning Margin

Game Winning Margin is a bet on the points difference between the winning and losing team. Sometimes you only need to select the points difference while other markets may also ask you to choose which team will be the win. For example, in a Brose Bamberg vs Telekom Baskets Bonn match, you bet that the point difference will be between 5 and 8 points. If the final score was 80-74, Brose Bamberg would have won by 6 points and the bet would be successful.

Half-Time/Full-Time

In this bet, you bet on the result in the first half of the game and in the second half of the game, as if they were two different games. You can bet on only one half, or bet on which team will win the first half and which will be the overall winner.

Total Points

This is a bet on the total number of points scored by both teams during the match. This type of bet in basketball requires you to bet on the total points being under or over a number, for example, 156.5. If the game between Mitteldeutscher BC and Baskets Oldenburg ends 80-75 and we bet the total points is over 156.5, we lose the bet because the total points are 155.

Player & Game Props

Player & Game Props are bets specific to a certain stat of the game or of a player during the game. For example, we can bet on the number of free throws that will take place, how many fouls there will be, how many 3-pointers will be scored, or how many points a random player will score. As these bets are hard to get right, they usually come with long odds.

Live Bets

Live Bets are all the bets that you can place after a game has started. Many of the bets explained above can be place live, but keep in mind that once the game has started, the odds will change to reflect the action in the game. For example, if a team scores a 3-pointer or a player is sent off, this will have an immediate impact on the odds.