A handicap is one of the teams receiving a virtual advantage or disadvantage to level out the chances of a weaker team winning, such as an extra goal or points or setting a favoured team at a negative amount of goals/points.
(Adding a ‘+’ means it is extra and ‘-’ means we have set it lower as a disadvantage)
For example: A Premier League team vs a Division 2 team. We might start the Premier League team on -1 to give the division 2 team a fighting chance