Both Teams to Score: How Often Do Both Teams Score in Football?

1 October 2026·4 min read·By Denver

Both teams scored in 53.4% of 5,617 matches between March and September 2026. Fans predicted both teams to score in 62.0% of their score predictions, and those picks were right 56.7% of the time.

Both teams score in a little over half of football matches. Of the 5,617 finished matches that players predicted on CalledItMate between 22 March and 30 September 2026, 3,001 (53.4%) ended with both sides on the scoresheet. In the other 2,616 (46.6%), at least one team failed to score.

So "yes" was slightly more likely than "no", but only just. Below is the full split, each half, and how fans' predictions compared.

Both teams to score: the full split

Across the 5,617 matches:

Both teams scored and one side won: 2,135 matches (38.0%)
Both teams scored and it was a draw: 866 matches (15.4%)
Only one team scored: 2,275 matches (40.5%)
Neither team scored (0-0): 341 matches (6.1%)

Every scoring draw counts as "yes". 1-1 on its own made up 542 of the 3,001, which is no surprise given it was the most common score in football in the same sample.

Away teams were the ones who usually drew a blank. The away side failed to score in 1,737 matches (30.9%), the home side in 1,220 (21.7%). That fits the home edge in how often home teams win.

More goals, more often both teams score

A match with no goals or one goal can never be "yes", so total goals matter a lot. Here is the share of matches where both teams scored, by total goals:

2 goals: 542 of 1,173 (46.2%), all of them 1-1
3 goals: 838 of 1,249 (67.1%)
4 goals: 672 of 861 (78.0%)
5 or more goals: 949 of 1,111 (85.4%)

Of the 3,221 matches with three or more goals, 2,459 (76.3%) also had both teams scoring. Across the whole sample, both teams to score and over 2.5 goals landed together in 2,459 of 5,617 matches (43.8%). For the goals side of this, see average goals per football match.

Both teams to score in the first half and second half

Half-time scores were recorded for 5,441 of the matches. In those:

Both teams scored in the first half: 1,096 matches (20.1%)
Both teams scored in the second half: 1,520 matches (27.9%)
Both teams scored in both halves: 326 matches (6.0%)
Both teams scored over the full match: 2,896 matches (53.2%)

Scoring in both halves was rare, about one match in seventeen.

A goalless first half did not kill it either. Of the 1,515 matches that were 0-0 at half-time, 430 (28.4%) still finished with both teams scoring.

Both teams to score in the Premier League, in this sample

The Premier League part of the sample is small: 122 matches. Both teams scored in 66 of them (54.1%), very close to the overall rate. Read that as roughly half.

How often fans predict both teams to score

The 971 players in the sample made 22,221 score predictions. Of those, 13,774 (62.0%) had both teams scoring and 8,447 (38.0%) did not, including 266 predictions of 0-0.

So fans backed both teams to score noticeably more often than it happened, 62.0% of predictions against 53.4% of matches. It is the same pattern as in our scorelines study: fans like a few goals at both ends and shy away from clean sheets.

Predicted both teams to score: right 7,810 times out of 13,774 (56.7%)
Predicted at least one side to blank: right 4,141 times out of 8,447 (49.0%)

The "yes" picks did better, mainly because "yes" is the slightly more common outcome.

The crowd as a whole was only a little sharper than a coin flip here. In the 3,062 matches where most predictions had both teams scoring, both teams did score in 1,690 (55.2%). In the 1,969 matches where most predictions had a clean sheet somewhere, both teams still scored in 1,018 (51.7%). (586 matches split evenly and are left out of that comparison.)

What this means if you predict scores

Both teams to score sits close to 50-50, and the crowd's view barely moved it. When you pick a correct score, the more useful questions are whether the away side is likely to blank, since that happened in nearly a third of matches, and how many goals you expect, since games with three or more goals had both teams scoring three times in four. Our guide on how to predict football scores goes through building a prediction step by step.

How we counted

Window: matches that kicked off from 22 March to 30 September 2026 inclusive (UTC), finished, and have a recorded final score. Data read on 1 October 2026.
Excluded: internal test matches, house accounts run by CalledItMate, and duplicate accounts merged into another account.
Matches are the finished matches that received at least one score prediction, each counted once. Predictions are each player's final predicted score for a match. Goals are the recorded final score, so penalty shootouts are not counted.
Half-time figures use the 5,441 matches with a recorded half-time score that fits the final score. Second-half goals include any extra time.
This is the same sample as our other data articles. CalledItMate players are a self-selected group of football fans, and the competition mix follows what they chose to predict.

Want to put the numbers to work? CalledItMate is a free football prediction game: call the correct score before kick-off, then pick the next goalscorer and the next team to score while the match is live. There is nothing to stake, and the weekly winner takes a real cash prize (how the prizes work). Play free at calleditmate.com.