How Big is Football (soccer) Betting?

[Hazo]

Anyone know of any facts or figures in relation to this?

How much does football account for revenue at the bookies?

Comparisons in revenue to other sports?

[Mackan]

I am only guessing here but for the European bookies I would like to think that soccer is the sport getting the most action by far.

[rakebackengine]

I have heard on good authority that Asian football betting turnover is 40 times bigger than European turnover

Tim

[pokerprop]

Depends on what scale you want to look at it. While its really hard to compare but here's some stats:

2001 estimates (by FBI and a government funded study) of illegal sports betting sizes it in the US about the same size as 2007 legal sports betting in the UK.

2008 studies range the profit UK bookmakers legal made to be around 2.5 billion, where the profit bookies made illegally from US citizens to be 12 to 68 billion depending who's figures you want to go by.

This compares just UK to US, soccer is not a popular betting sport in US, however soccer is a popular betting sport in far more countries than the UK.

Reasons soccer might be larger:

Asian betting market is much larger than European, Tim suggested this in earlier post, but have heard it many times. I am not sure though how that correlates with soccer other than soccer is really popular in Asia.

Pinnacle Sports coined a term a while ago Taiwanese steam. This basically refers to crazy line movement just before the game, which is coming as the result of that match up having television coverage in Taiwan. Supposedly anything televised over there, whether they have any knowledge of sport or not, gets massive betting action. Also heard Asian betting on European Basketball can move those lines a lot, making European Basketball while a small market on of the most profitable to bet. Unfortunately many bookmakers willing to take tens of thousands of dollars on a NFL football game are only willing to take a couple hundred per bet on European basketball and move the line as they go.

A lot more research would need to be done on each countries betting profits, estimates of each sport from bookmakers, and then we'd still have the fact the US is just wide range predictions not likely accurate.

The one thing I strongly suspect and would be surprised if it is not true is that the leagues with the most wagering volume are the US ones. I mean leagues not sport. In soccer there are tons of leagues and certain games primarily have an interest by fans of a specific region, with a few outside followers. Take NFL on the other hand it has large wagering interest though the US, Canada has sports lotteries on it, and I can say from affiliate stats there is a lot of NFL football bettors in Canada, and also get plenty of wagers from other countries as well. I'd also suspect total dollars wagered on NFL exceed that of any other league because the betting limits are so much larger than other sports.

Again the above is only strong suspicion. No doubt the soccer betting market is massive regardless. My theory is it shrinks when broken down into regions and then compared on specific sports league basis. Of course i have no idea though how much interest say someone in Spain has on a UK only league, or how much interest someone in UK has in an Asian league etc. Maybe there is more interest than I am assuming.

Anyways that's some rough 5 minute as fast as I can type insight from me on that topic.

[TheGooner]

I can give you my feedback - some someone who covers both football and US sports for a European / Asian reader base.

Football is by far the most popular sports betting market throughout Europe and Asia (excluding horse racing - I simple don't have the expertise to cover that) and can probably be broken down into four levels.

1) The Worldwide TV Market
The most popular leagues are obviously the ones that have global TV coverage - these that's England's Premier League and Spain's LA Liga. These leagues easily transcend country boundaries - and a followed throughout the world. That's 38 games per team in each league.

The UEFA Champions League is also popular, but it is a midweek competition with less fixtures (10-15 per team) so while the game days attract lots of activity - there are just less days.

Teams in these leagues have global reach, global sales markes, and you are likely to see these clubs shirts being worn by fans in 100 different countries.

2) Top leagues - but less hype
FRom there the next teir down are the top leagues from countries without a good TV market, Italy's Serie A, Germany's Bundesliga and perhaps Holland's Eredivision ... all good markets for the serious football punter and with some global support.

3) Country markets - Top Division
After that you then have 20 lesser countries, Turkey, Greece, Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Austria, Belgium, France etc that will appeal to their domestic audience but not much more ...

4) Country markets - Lower divisions - Minor countries
And finally you have the lower leagues that are the domain of fans of smaller sides and the hard-core experts looking for a weak line. There are 100's of these.

If I had to guess at a ratio of value I'd say :
- Level 1 - 65%
- Level 2 - 15%
- Level 3 - 10%
- Level 4 - 10%

Betting on American sports (NBA, MLB, NFL, NCAA) at European / Asian bookmakers would probably be equivilent to level four - just looking a punters from outside the US market.

[TheGooner]

The estimate of Asian betting turnover v European is tricky- because the vast majority of asian football betting is done offline as cash transactions with backstreet bookmakers.

Online, Asian punters seem to have a lack of access to credit cards and online wallets, and it's very difficult to monetise this demographic, at least I've not found a satisfactory way yet.

[pokerprop]

good post Gooner.

A little on Asian market from where you left off. Internet is not as popular in many Asian countries, but most places do have access to internet cafes and do have a credit card to deposit. Most ATM cards have visa symbol on them which are actual visa electron which gambling sites have a long history of accepting.

I've used both Thai and Hong Kong debit cards to deposit at sites before and never a challenge (other than needing to sometimes fax my passport and info I actually owned the account, but that's more to do with having previously had a US address).

There are few large problems though with targeting Asian markets:

1) The internet is not trusted as much. People are highly skeptical to do transactions online. Internet shopping is not as big of a factor or something that many are accustomed to and they're scared most internet transactions are scams.

Even getting past that challenge the next one comes that:

2) Most betting here is done on credit. This is true even of betting online. Anyone with a history of payment can likely get hooked up via their regular bookie with credit account at an online betting site. I know two large European bookmakers (one well known and publicly traded, the other Caribbean based - but focusing on European sports) that have large credit operations in Hong Kong, and Taiwan. It gets harder to target these markets when these guys can bet online without post up and pay after in paper money, or get paid after in paper money with no trail.

3) In addition to this in other countries were gambling is policed even harder there are post up opportunities paying in cash. Here in Thailand one thing that is pretty popular (at least with in Isaan anyways, not sure about big city but imagine the same) is gambling cards. These are almost like gift certificates that can be used at online casinos. You purchase a card and have credits here go into account at casino select the reup method enter in the bar code and you're credited with cash. For cashouts most have agent and its often the local noodle vendor or w/e. Gambling is illegal here heavily but in addition to this they also sell the lottery numbers given higher payouts and actually do pay when win. Police do busts on occasions, perhaps to keep quote but most of it is mafia related and they get cut to turn a blind eye. I try to avoid this stuff here, but hear enough about it, and do know a few people that have gotten paid playing the illegal version of the legal lottery, and its common enough.

This makes it harder to promote the online version again, because the locals who want to gamble, even online, have enough opportunity to do it paying cash and getting paid in cash.

Doing it from afar the opportunity does exist to get more savvy bettors. Doing it in person while it probably might work out, would be pretty insane because volumes are small and you're competing with the mafia in an area the mafia is really powerful, obviously not a good idea in most cases.

I'm no expert on this market, but that's what I know of it, and the reasons promoting online gambling in Asia is likely tough, despite it being a massive market that has plenty of demand.

PS. a friend in Vegas who previously lived in Philippines told me about these gambling cards for playing online casinos probably 3-4 years ago, long before I actually seen them sold here, so don't think that is just Thailand specific and is probably available in other areas as well.