What is the most common football score?
By FootInsights · Published · Updated 19 Oct 2026 · 5 min read
In short: 1-1 is the most common football scoreline, in 12.2% of the 17,608 finished matches across the nine leagues in our dataset, but 1-0 to either side is the most common result, at 17.6%. Four scorelines — 0-0, 1-0, 0-1 and 1-1 — cover 36.3% of matches, and that share swings by league, from 28% in the Bundesliga to 43% in the Brasileirão.
| Measured over 17,608 matches, 19 October 2026 | Share |
|---|---|
| 1-1, the most common exact scoreline | 12.2% |
| 1-0 to either side, the most common result | 17.6% |
| 0-0, 1-0, 0-1 and 1-1 together | 36.3% |
| Draws of any score | 25.6% |
The most common football score is 1-1, which happened in 12.2% of the 17,608 finished matches in our database — roughly one match in eight.
That is the short answer. The longer one is more useful, because the question hides an ambiguity that changes the result, and because the shape of the whole distribution explains more about football than the top line does.
The full distribution
Every finished match across the nine leagues in our dataset, ranked by how often each exact scoreline occurred:
| Score | Matches | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 1-1 | 2,141 | 12.16% |
| 1-0 | 1,768 | 10.04% |
| 2-1 | 1,553 | 8.82% |
| 0-1 | 1,326 | 7.53% |
| 1-2 | 1,275 | 7.24% |
| 2-0 | 1,219 | 6.92% |
| 0-0 | 1,155 | 6.56% |
| 2-2 | 1,013 | 5.75% |
| 0-2 | 848 | 4.82% |
| 3-1 | 748 | 4.25% |
| 3-0 | 709 | 4.03% |
| 1-3 | 450 | 2.56% |
Those twelve scorelines account for about 81% of all matches. Everything else — every 4-3, every 5-0, every result you actually remember — shares the remaining fifth between dozens of possibilities.
The ambiguity: scoreline or margin?
Here is why published answers to this question disagree.
By exact scoreline, 1-1 wins, at 12.16%.
By result pattern, a one-goal win 1-0 is more common: 1-0 (10.04%) plus 0-1 (7.53%) means 17.57% of matches finish 1-0 to somebody. That is the single most common way for a football match to end, and it beats 1-1 comfortably.
Both answers are correct; they answer different questions. If you are betting a correct-score market, the exact scoreline matters and 1-1 is your answer. If you are asking how football matches tend to finish, “1-0 to someone” is the honest reply.
What the shape tells you
Three things fall out of that table.
Low scores dominate overwhelmingly. Every scoreline in the top seven involves two goals or fewer from at least one side, and nothing above three goals for a single team appears at all. Football’s distribution is compressed at the bottom, which is exactly why the sport is so hard to predict — there simply are not enough scoring events for the better team to reliably express itself.
Home advantage is visible in every pair. Compare the mirror images: 1-0 (10.04%) against 0-1 (7.53%); 2-0 (6.92%) against 0-2 (4.82%); 3-0 (4.03%) against 0-3 (2.33%). The home version is more common every time, which is home advantage showing up as an asymmetry in the scoreline table rather than as an abstract percentage. Across the whole dataset home teams average 1.52 goals to away teams’ 1.22.
Four scorelines carry more than a third of all football. 0-0, 1-0, 0-1 and 1-1 together make up 36.3% of matches. This is not a curiosity — it is precisely the region where a plain Poisson model misprices reality, and precisely what the Dixon-Coles correction exists to repair. A model that gets those four cells wrong is getting more than a third of football wrong.
Why “most likely” is still unlikely
The practical consequence catches people out constantly. 1-1 is the most common scoreline in football and it still only happens 12% of the time, which means backing it loses seven times in eight.
This is the defining feature of correct-score betting: the favourite outcome in that market is a heavy underdog in absolute terms, and the prices reflect it. A “most likely score” is a statement about ranking, not about probability being high — the full explanation is here, and it is the same reason our model’s modal scoreline is published as information rather than as a recommendation.
Does it vary by league?
Substantially. The Bundesliga averages 3.19 goals per match and the Brasileirão 2.45, and that difference reshapes the whole table — low-scoring competitions push weight into 0-0 and 1-0, high-scoring ones spread it across 2-1, 3-1 and beyond. In Brazil, those four low scorelines account for 42.6% of matches; in the Bundesliga, 28.0%.
The same count for each of the nine leagues, as of 19 October 2026, with the number of matches it rests on:
| League | Matches | Most common | Share | Next | 0-0, 1-0, 0-1, 1-1 | Goals a game |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Championship | 2,906 | 1-1 | 12.8% | 1-0 (10.7%) | 39.8% | 2.55 |
| Brasileirão | 2,208 | 1-1 | 13.5% | 1-0 (13.4%) | 42.6% | 2.45 |
| La Liga | 1,987 | 1-1 | 13.5% | 1-0 (12.6%) | 41.0% | 2.62 |
| Premier League | 1,969 | 1-1 | 11.0% | 2-1 (8.4%) | 31.4% | 2.93 |
| Serie A | 1,968 | 1-1 | 12.8% | 1-0 (10.2%) | 38.1% | 2.62 |
| Ligue 1 | 1,747 | 1-1 | 11.4% | 1-0 (9.0%) | 34.2% | 2.83 |
| Eredivisie | 1,630 | 1-1 | 10.9% | 1-2 (7.3%) | 28.7% | 3.11 |
| Primeira Liga | 1,605 | 1-0 | 11.0% | 1-1 (11.0%) | 37.5% | 2.66 |
| Bundesliga | 1,588 | 1-1 | 11.4% | 2-1 (7.9%) | 28.0% | 3.19 |
Portugal is the one league where 1-0 edges 1-1, and only by a handful of matches. The Premier League, Bundesliga and Eredivisie are the three where a 2-1 or 1-2 overtakes 1-0 for second place: the higher the scoring, the further the weight moves from the low cells.
This is why a model has to know which league it is looking at. A single scoreline distribution estimated across all nine competitions would be wrong everywhere — too flat for Brazil, too concentrated for Germany.
About these numbers
Every figure comes from our own database of finished matches across those nine leagues, counted on 19 October 2026; the shares drift as more matches finish. How our predictions for upcoming matches are produced, and how they are settled afterwards, is described on how our predictions work and published on the track record.
Nothing here is betting advice, and the most common score being 1-1 is not a system. Stake only what you can afford to lose.