First Goal Scorer (FGS) is a market on which player scores the first goal — popular for punting but poorly suited to trading. Liquidity is thin, prices are long, and you cannot reliably green a striker before kickoff. It works as a value play if you can find an underpriced scorer, but for actual trading the goals and correct-score markets are far better.
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This is a cluster sub of our deep-dive guide to every Betfair market. The pillar covers the full market range; this page tackles the First Goal Scorer family — FGS, anytime scorer, last scorer — honestly, including the unfashionable conclusion that it is mostly a punting market, not a trading one. For the goal markets that do trade well, see trading over/under goals.
What the First Goal Scorer Market Is
The First Goal Scorer market is a bet on which individual player will score the first goal of the match. It typically lists every likely scorer in both squads plus a “No Goalscorer” option (which wins on a 0-0), and the prices range from short for a prolific striker on a high-scoring favourite to very long for a defender or substitute. It is closely related to the Anytime Goalscorer market (any goal, not just the first) and the Last Goalscorer market.
It is enduringly popular with punters because it is intuitive and offers big prices — backing your favourite striker to open the scoring at 5.0 or 6.0 is an appealing flutter. But popularity with punters and suitability for traders are very different things, and FGS is a textbook case of a market that is fun to bet and frustrating to trade, for reasons that come straight from how it is priced and how thinly it trades on the exchange.
How FGS Prices Are Built
An FGS price combines two probabilities: how likely the player is to score at all in the match, and how likely that goal is to be the first one. The first factor depends on the player's role and finishing (a central striker on an attacking side scores far more than a defensive midfielder), their expected minutes, and the team's overall goal expectancy. The second factor dilutes everyone's price, because only one player can score first and there is also the chance the match opens 0-0 for a long time or ends goalless.
This is why even a star striker is rarely shorter than about 4.0–5.0 to score first: there are many players who could open the scoring, and a meaningful chance no goal comes early or at all. The maths is essentially a distribution across all possible first-scorers plus the no-goal outcome, and converting any of those prices to its implied probability shows how the total book is spread thin across many selections — which is exactly what makes the market hard to trade.
The Liquidity Problem
The defining practical issue with FGS on the exchange is liquidity, or the lack of it. Because the market is split across dozens of individual players, the money is spread thinly — any single striker might have only a few hundred pounds available to back or lay, even in a big match, and the less-fancied selections have almost nothing. Compare that with the main Match Odds or Over/Under markets, which hold tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Thin liquidity has direct consequences: wide spreads between back and lay prices, difficulty getting matched at the size you want, and prices that lurch on small amounts of money. You cannot reliably enter and exit a position at fair prices, which is fatal for trading — trading depends on being able to lay back what you backed at a controlled price, and FGS rarely lets you. The illiquidity that makes FGS a poor trade is the same reason the live-market reading skills in reading live markets are harder to apply here.
Can You Actually Trade It?
Honestly, not well. Trading in the proper sense — backing a striker pre-match and laying him at a shorter price to green before a ball is kicked — barely works in FGS, because the price will not move enough or trade with enough liquidity to lock a reliable profit. There is no steady pre-match drift to harvest the way there is in goals markets, and the spreads eat any small edge you might find.
The one place a trade-like move exists is in-play, and even then it is closer to a binary bet than a trade. If you back a striker pre-match and he is on the pitch and looking dangerous, his anytime-scorer price will shorten — but the FGS price specifically becomes worthless the instant anyone scores first, so there is no greening once the first goal goes in to someone else. It is a market you mostly hold to resolution, which makes it a punt, not a trade, and that is the honest framing missing from a lot of content that tries to dress FGS up as a trading opportunity.
In-Play FGS Dynamics
In-running, the FGS market collapses to a simple race: the moment a goal is scored, that player's selection wins and every other FGS selection loses instantly — including “No Goalscorer.” Before the first goal, the prices of attacking players who are on top will shorten as their team presses, and the “No Goalscorer” option shortens as goalless minutes pass, mirroring the Under 0.5 decay covered in our in-play goal trading work.
That “No Goalscorer” decay is the closest thing to a tradeable angle in the FGS family — it behaves like a thin, illiquid version of Under 0.5 goals — but because the dedicated Under 0.5 market is far more liquid, you should just trade that instead. The lesson is that FGS in-play offers excitement but no real edge over the cleaner, deeper markets that price the same underlying events. Knowing this saves you from chasing a tradeable edge that is not really there.
From the Desk: An FGS Liquidity Reality Check
The setup: A Premier League striker I rated, priced around 5.5 to score first in a match his side was favoured to win. I wanted to test whether FGS could be traded, so I tried to back £50 on him about an hour before kickoff.
The liquidity wall: There was only about £200 available to back across the top of the market at anything near 5.5, and the lay side was thin and wide — you could back at 5.5 but the best lay was up at 6.2, a spread that immediately tells you greening is going to be expensive. My £50 took a couple of minutes to match in pieces as fresh money trickled in.
The non-trade: Pre-match, his price barely moved — FGS prices are sticky because so little money flows through them — so there was simply no drift to green into. In-play, the only way to “exit” was to lay him back into a wide, thin spread, which would have crystallised a loss to the spread even though my read was fine. I ended up just holding the bet to resolution: he did not score first, −£50, a pure punt outcome.
The lesson: The experiment confirmed the obvious — FGS is a market to bet, not to trade. The same £50, deployed in the Under 0.5 HT or Over 1.5 goals market, would have given me a clean back-then-lay trade with real liquidity and a tight spread. If your edge is a view on goals, express it in a liquid goals market; if your edge is a specific striker, treat FGS as a value punt and accept you are holding to the whistle.
First Goal Scorer is a high-variance punting market — even a well-judged selection loses most of the time, because only one of many players can score first. Thin liquidity means wide spreads and poor exits. Treat it as an occasional value flutter, not a strategy. Most football bettors lose over time. Never bet more than you can afford to lose; this is education, not investment advice, and past results do not guarantee future returns.
Better Goal Markets to Trade
If your interest is in trading goals, the liquid markets are where the real opportunities sit. The Over/Under goals markets — especially the 0.5 and 1.5 lines in our goal-line trading guide — offer deep liquidity, tight spreads and clean price decay you can actually green into. The half-time markets give the same decay trade on a shorter clock. And correct score trading lets you express specific scoreline views with proper two-way liquidity.
All three price the same underlying thing FGS gestures at — whether and when goals come — but in markets deep enough to trade properly. The general rule for choosing a market to trade, not just on goals, is to follow the liquidity: a tradeable edge needs a market you can enter and exit at fair prices, and the headline markets in our football trading strategies guide are headline markets precisely because the money is there. FGS, for all its appeal, simply is not.
Using FGS as a Value Punt
FGS earns its keep as a value-betting market, not a trading one. If you have a genuine read that a particular striker is underpriced to open the scoring — a penalty-taker against a side that concedes early, a fast starter facing a slow-starting defence — backing him to score first at a long price can be a sound value play, in the value-betting sense covered in finding value bets. You are buying a probability you think the market has set too long, and holding it to settlement.
The discipline is treating it accordingly: stake it small as the high-variance punt it is, expect to lose most of them even when right (because only one of many players scores first), and judge it over a large sample on whether your selections were genuinely underpriced. What you should not do is convince yourself you are “trading” FGS or that you can green it reliably — that misunderstanding just leads to crystallising losses against wide spreads. Bet it as a punt or skip it; do not pretend it is a trade.
The Honest Verdict
First Goal Scorer is a popular, intuitive, high-variance punting market that is poorly suited to trading because of thin liquidity, sticky prices and the absence of any clean back-then-lay edge. The honest verdict that a lot of football-trading content avoids is simple: if you want to trade goals, trade the liquid goals and correct-score markets; if you fancy a specific striker, back FGS as a value punt and hold it to the whistle.
My take after testing it properly: FGS belongs in your betting, not your trading. There is genuine value to be had backing underpriced scorers if you do the work, but no reliable trade to be made, and trying to force one just feeds the spread. Keep FGS as an occasional, small, well-judged punt, and channel your actual trading into the deep markets the market deep-dive pillar maps out. Following the liquidity is the whole lesson here.
Anytime and Last Goalscorer Markets
FGS has two close cousins worth understanding, because they share its appeal and most of its limitations. The Anytime Goalscorer market pays out if your player scores at any point in the match, not just first — so the prices are shorter (a prolific striker might be 1.8–2.2 anytime versus 5.0+ to score first) and the bet is much more likely to win. Last Goalscorer mirrors FGS at the other end, paying on whoever scores the final goal, and is essentially unknowable until late in the match.
Anytime Goalscorer is the most useful of the three because it is the one with a hint of tradeability. A striker's anytime price genuinely shortens as the match goes on and he looks dangerous, and it does not get wiped out the instant someone else scores the way FGS does — he can still score later. So if you back a striker anytime pre-match and his side dominates the first half without him scoring, his price may actually drift (less time left) or shorten (clearly going to score), and there can be a real, if illiquid, exit. It still suffers the same fragmented-liquidity problem as FGS, so it remains closer to a punt than a trade, but it is the pick of the scorer family if you insist on being in one.
Last Goalscorer is the least tradeable and most purely a punt — you cannot meaningfully judge who scores last until the closing stages, by which point the market is thin and the outcome largely settled. My honest guidance across all three: treat the scorer markets as occasional value flutters where you have a specific, evidenced read on a player, stake them small, and accept the high variance. For anything you want to actually trade — to back and lay for a controlled green — go to the liquid goals and correct-score markets every time. The scorer markets are where football betting is fun; they are not where football trading happens, and the deep markets in the market deep-dive pillar are where your edge, if you have one, should be deployed.
FAQ
Can you trade the First Goal Scorer market on Betfair?
Not reliably. FGS has thin liquidity spread across dozens of players, wide back-lay spreads, and sticky prices that do not drift enough to green a position before kickoff. The market loses all value the moment anyone else scores first, so it is held to resolution — making it a punt rather than a trade. Liquid goals markets trade far better.
Why is the First Goal Scorer market so illiquid?
Because the money is split across every possible scorer plus a No Goalscorer option, so any single player has only a small share of the total. Even in a big match a striker might have a few hundred pounds available, versus tens of thousands in the Match Odds market. That fragmentation causes wide spreads and difficulty getting matched.
Is First Goal Scorer a good bet?
It can be a sound value bet if you find a genuinely underpriced scorer, but it is high variance — even good selections lose most of the time, because only one of many players can score first. Stake it small as a punt, expect a low strike rate, and judge it over a large sample on whether your selections were underpriced.
What should I trade instead of First Goal Scorer?
Trade the liquid goals markets — Over/Under 0.5 and 1.5 goals, half-time goals, and correct score — which price the same underlying goal events but with deep liquidity, tight spreads and clean price decay you can green into. If you have a goals view, express it where the money is, not in the fragmented FGS market.
Related Reading
Stay in the markets cluster: every Betfair market explained, half-time markets, over/under markets. Trade instead: trading goal lines, correct score, in-play goals, football hub.