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Footy tipping is a competition where competitors try to predict the winning teams in a round of games played each round during (usually) the home and away season of a sport. The most common sport in which footy tipping is played is Australian rules football, however footy tipping now is played on many types of sports including rugby league, rugby union and football (soccer).

Footy tipping is predominantly played in Australia, however it is not a unique Australian custom. Footy Tipping is known in other countries under names such as "Office Pools", "Football pools" or "Betting pool", however most countries have slightly different rules.

In order to eliminate draws, the competitors (or tippers as they are called) commonly also try to tip the winning margin in the first game of each round.

Footy Tipping is most often played in offices where office workers are entered into a competition amongst themselves. Usually, each player puts in money to play and the person with the highest score at the end of the season (or round) wins a portion of the money. Although the structure of footy tipping technically constitutes gaming, most Australian states allow work place tipping competitions to operate.

Due to the internet, many large scale free to enter tipping competitions are run by media companies and sporting bodies such as the Australian Football League or the National Rugby League. These competitions are free to enter due to gaming regulations in Australia.

Traditionally done with pen and paper, footy tipping is also done with software programs but the internet now plays the leading role in running office footy tipping competitions.

"Tipping by the Odds" started as a response to the drawback of most regular footy tipping competitions in that they do not adequately reward the tipping of upsets, but rather encourage conservative tipping.

Odds Tipping (as it is sometimes known) pays out bookmaker odds for each win. For example, in an 2006 round 19 AFL game between Adelaide and Fremantle, where Adelaid was the clear favourite, the pay off was $1.28 for those tipping an Adelaide win and $3.55 for those tipping a Fremantle win. As Fremantle won the game, those tipping Adelaide received $0 for that game. Typically, the odds are announced for a given round early in the week leading up to the weekend's fixtures, with the odds remaining fixed once first announced. Tipsters place their tips after the odds are announced.

Tipping competitions, like their cousin gambling, are never short of controversy. The 2006 victory of Fremantle over St.Kilda in Launceston delivered many a tipping comp. with a constitutional crisis. The problem arose whereby the umpire did not hear the final siren and allowed play to for a significant amount of time after what should have been the conclusion of play. Fremantle were leading when the final siren went, but St.Kilda we subsequently able to tie the game. Days later, the AFL commission met and ruled the Fremantle had won the game. Despite the ruling of the AFL commission, many bookmakers and tipping comp. administrators refused to take this ruling into account^{[citation needed]}.