The Most Popular Sports to Bet On

When we talk about online gambling, a lot of people still choose sports betting to make more money. There are plenty of reasons why people do that, but we can say that culture plays an important role. Initially, when betting was gaining popularity in Europe, one of the first sports that started accepting bets were horse racing and boxing. 

Since then a lot of things have changed of course. The essence of gambling is different from what we knew in the past. The development of online platforms made it easier for people to access different websites in just a few seconds. 

What are the most popular sports to place bets on? If you visit the majority of bookmakers, you will discover several dozens of sports, but not all of them enjoy the same prominence as the other ones. Let’s have a look at sports which are the most popular ones among punters.

Football

It will not surprise anyone that football takes the absolute palm among the total number of bets. Football is the most popular game on the planet, and it is on it that a huge amount of money is bet. Naturally, most of the bets fall on major world championships, for example, the Champions League final or the World Cup.

Another thing is that football is widespread in almost every country – even the ones that do not have football as the first sport. In almost every sportsbook, you will see less popular leagues that accept bets on matches. 

eSports

Recently, eSports has become very popular. Moreover, the competition of the best gamers is followed not only out of idle interest. You can earn serious money from their performances. Moreover, there are even bookmakers that specialize in eSports betting.

Bookmakers that are particularly specialized in eSports betting are crypto-friendly ones. That is they accept bets in Bitcoin and different cryptocurrencies. That is a trend that has been popular in recent years. Right now eSports betting with Bitcoin sometimes surpasses betting with fiat money, which comes as no surprise. The advantages and positive characteristics the cryptocurrency possesses encourages a lot of people to move to digital coins.

Tennis

Have you thought about seeing hockey here? It is not so. Hockey might be a popular sport but it is not the first option for punters. After football and eSports, tennis comes next in terms of the volume of bets. All this is due to the huge number of tennis competitions. Almost every day, at any time of the day or night, tennis is played somewhere on the planet. In this regard, tennis is most often played in live mode.

The tournaments that enjoy the most popularity are Grand Slam competitions. In addition, punters choose to bet on Masters as well. Tennis betting has a lot of space for manoeuvring for punters. 

Basketball

Among basketball competitions, the NBA is ahead of the rest. Even those who, especially in basketball, do not know about the best basketball league in the world put their bets. And all this is due to the fact that the NBA has a lot of working strategies for making money. 

Euroleague is also a possibility for punters. While the latter does not have the same exposure as the NBA, still Euroleague betting is common in Europe.

NFL

The NFL is like a religion in the United States and it comes as no surprise that the majority of punters that place bets on the NFL come from the United States. The NFL offers a lot of possibilities of betting to their customers. From spreads to moneyline betting everything is possible in American football. 

UFC

Mixed martial arts are much less common, but in terms of the volume of bets, they can even be compared with football. There were more bets on the fight between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Justin Gaethje than on the 2020 Champions League final. By the way, there are bookmakers that specialize in the UFC as well. 

UFC and MMA are sometimes confused with each other. MMA is a general term to describe mixed martial arts, and UFC is a particular direction.

Which Sport is Better to Bet On: Individual or Team?

In individual sports, there are a couple of athletes involved, and you might think that it is easier to do a qualitative analysis here – this is a popular misconception. In such sports, every little thing matters. The psychological state, mood, state of health at a particular moment in time – all this is almost impossible to know for sure.

The player can sleep poorly or get micro-injured during the match. Thus, the initially favorable rate may not pass due to the small detail, even with a perfect analysis.

If this happens in a team sport, the player is changed, and this has much less impact on the final result. Of course, if a leader is injured this is also a problem, but still making correct predictions is easier. 

Photo by Kevin Mueller on Unsplash