How will football's rule changes affect betting?

By James Cantrill

10:34 · MON August 21, 2023

Football’s “dark arts” came under heavy scrutiny last campaign and with good reason.

Published before the second week of EFL action

The average Premier League ball-in-play time dropped to 54 minutes and 46 seconds, the lowest it has been since records began back in 2012-13. In the Championship, the average playing time was just 53 minutes and 45 seconds.

Keen to address this issue, the EFL released a statement on their website on how they plan to enhance ball-in-play time this season.

In previous seasons the policy was to add on a nominal period of time for certain game events. The events include:

Goals and subsequent celebrations
Substitutions
Injuries and treatment time (if required)
Penalties (from moment of offence to the whistle for the penalty kick)
Red cards (from moment of offence to when the player leaves the field)
Alongside a more accurate allowance for time lost during the game, the EFL will also adopt the multi-ball system, which has been proven to increase ball in-play time.

Match officials will also be taking a more robust approach to dealing with clear/deliberate actions that are impactful in delaying the restart of play, with players cautioned if they are guilty of:

Delaying the restart of play
Failing to respect the required distance at free-kicks.

What does this mean?

Added time

There is a lot more added time, simply put.

On EFL opening weekend, five games went on for 110 minutes or longer. If this carries on over the course of the campaign, it will be the equivalent of six more games played compared to last season.

Physically, this saw players run an average of 1km more per game compared to last season. Not all players welcome these rule changes.

Common sense would tell you more time played, more time to score and the stats from matchday one back this up.

Over the last five seasons, there was an average of 29.2 goals on MD1, this season there were 37.

They have been scored later on as well. Last campaign, 6.25% of the goals on MD1 were scored in injury time, this season 19% of the goals came after regulation.

Cards

With the threshold significantly lowered, there was a steep increase in cards per game in the football league on open day weekend.

Twice as many keepers (8) were carded this season then on opening day last season.

Across the three divisions, one game saw 13 cards brandished, two saw 12, three saw nine and eight games saw eight cards.

Card Happy Referee’s (EFL Matchday One)

Championship

Robert Madley - Y8 R0
John Busby - Y8 R1
Kieth Stroud - Y7 R0
Dean Whitestone - Y7 R0

League One

Simon Mather - Y10 R0
David Rock - Y8 R0
Sam Allison - Y7 R0

League Two

Martin Coy - 10Y R0
Thomas Parsons - Y9 R1
Matthew Corlett - Y7
Sam Purkiss - Y6 R1
Ben Atkinson - Y6 R1

Safer gambling

We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.

If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / GamCare on 0808 8020 133.

Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org and gamblingtherapy.org.