Bankroll Management
How to calculate ROI in football betting
Return on investment in betting is net profit divided by the starting bankroll, expressed as a percentage. If a €1,000 bankroll produces €34 of profit, the ROI is 3.4% — regardless of how many bets or how much turnover it took to get there.
By BetBuddy Editorial Team · Editorial & research · Published · Last updated · 3 min read
The formula BetBuddy uses
ROI answers a capital question: what did this bankroll earn? It is the figure quoted across BetBuddy's statistics and strategy pages, so that different staking plans running on the same selections remain directly comparable.
ROI % = (net profit ÷ starting bankroll) × 100
ROI, yield and win rate are not interchangeable
Yield divides profit by total turnover, so a strategy that recycles the same bankroll many times will show a low yield and a high ROI. Win rate says nothing at all about profit without the prices attached — a 70% strike rate at 1.30 loses money.
| Metric | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|
| ROI | 34 ÷ 1,000 | 3.4% |
| Yield | 34 ÷ 2,000 | 1.7% |
| Profit per bet | 34 ÷ 200 | €0.17 |
| Win rate | depends on prices | not a profit measure |
How much data before ROI means anything
ROI over 30 bets is noise with a percentage sign. The variance of football betting returns is large enough that a genuinely profitable process can show a negative ROI over a hundred bets, and a losing one can show a strong positive.
Treat ROI as a headline and the underlying ledger as the evidence. BetBuddy publishes both: the aggregate on the statistics page and every settled bet in the history.
Reporting ROI honestly
Betting carries financial risk and no staking plan removes it. Historical performance does not guarantee future results, and BetBuddy runs in paper mode: stakes are simulated and no bookmaker account is connected.
- State the starting bankroll and the number of settled bets alongside the percentage.
- Include losing periods; a date range chosen after the fact is not a result.
- Do not annualise a short sample.
- Keep the definition constant — switching between ROI and yield mid-report inflates the figure.
Return on bankroll versus yield on turnover
Two different denominators produce two different numbers, and mixing them is the most common reporting error in betting. Yield divides profit by total amount staked and measures how efficiently each euro of turnover worked. Return on bankroll divides profit by the starting bankroll and measures what the capital actually earned.
A €34 profit from €500 of turnover on a €1,000 bankroll is a 6.8% yield and a 3.4% return on bankroll. Both are correct; only one answers the question 'what did my money make?'. BetBuddy publishes ROI as profit divided by starting bankroll so that the four strategies, which turn over very different amounts, stay comparable.
ROI = profit ÷ starting bankroll × 100 · Yield = profit ÷ total staked × 100
Sample size and the honest caveat
An ROI figure without a bet count is decoration. At typical football prices, a fifty-bet sample can swing from clearly negative to strongly positive on two or three results, so any headline percentage should be read next to the number of settled bets behind it.
Every performance figure BetBuddy publishes carries its settled-bet count for that reason, and the underlying ledger is public so any quoted number can be recomputed from the raw rows.
| Measure | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Yield on turnover | 34 ÷ 500 | 6.8% |
| Return on bankroll | 34 ÷ 1,000 | 3.4% |
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About the author
BetBuddy's editorial team writes the education library and reviews every article against the production system it describes. Formulas are taken from the code that runs the staking engine, and any performance figure quoted comes from the tracked results ledger rather than from an example.