The FIFA World Cup is considered to be the biggest sporting event in the world. It takes place once every four years, and it attracts the attention of both enthusiasts and people who don’t usually care too much about sports. Naturally, the World Cup is one of the most significant events for the sports betting industry as well.
But the FIFA World Cup 2022 is significant for other reasons, too. For the first time in football history, an event this big is held in the Near East. The host is Qatar – an Arab country with a highly developed economy, fueled by oil and natural gas exports. Qatar is an exceptionally rich country, with a GDP per capita that is higher than that of Switzerland.
With so much money to go around, one would think that gambling should be thriving there. However, the legislature in Qatar is highly conservative and informed by religious views – those of Islam. And in the context of a traditional Arab culture, gambling is forbidden – all forms of it. Whether we are talking about casinos or betting houses, land-based or online – they’re all banned. Advertising gambling is also prohibited there.
At first glance, the law in Qatar is observed strictly – there are no local land-based or online casinos, and no gambling operator could possibly be licensed to do business in the country. If you live in Qatar and you want to gamble no matter the risk, you need to either find an operator that doesn’t care about the law (obviously a bad idea), or you could use the services of a virtual private network (VPN).
The use of VPN is what allows some people living in Qatar to find ways to gamble, despite the government’s efforts to limit illegal gambling by restricting access to offshore gambling sites. But the majority of citizens would rather follow the rules and even though the World Cup is happening in their own country, they are going to miss out on the betting opportunities available elsewhere in the world.
The World Cup of 2022 promises to be a great spectacle and an event filled with emotional moments. Betting can make those emotions even stronger, and there is no shortage of gambling opportunities for the fans. A study by the American Gaming Association reveals that more than 20 million Americans are going to be betting on matches during the World Cup, and they’ll spend a total of 1.8 billion USD on that.
Maybe you’re also considering placing a few bets of your own. So, let’s see what the betting options are. The first, and most obvious one, is to bet that one of the strongest teams will win – Brazil, England, France, etc. But there’s no guarantee, however, that the champion will be one of those countries.
Historically, there have been many cases, in which the underdog has defeated a massive favorite. For example, South Korea obtained a 2-0 victory against Germany in 2018. What is more, FIFA World Cup 2022 has delivered two major upsets already. First, Argentina lost to Saudi Arabia, and then Germany to Japan. Maybe you can guess the next big upset?
If you do feel like you’ve got some really good predictions, and you’re interested in placing bets, you would benefit from knowing a bit more about betting in general. For example, it’s important to keep in mind that there is pre-match and live betting. The first kind is self-explanatory. The second one, live betting – that’s when you place bets while the match is being played.
Live betting opens up new dimensions for analyzing a more dynamic situation and strategizing on more levels. While watching a match, you could quickly get a feel of how strong the motivation of players is and if they are driven by a powerful desire to win or not. Of course, the amount you can win from live betting is getting lower as the outcome of the match becomes easier to predict. If you decide to bet that a team would win after getting a 3-0 lead, you won’t get anything out of it.
The opposite of live betting is the futures bet – it’s a bet on who is going to win the whole event, who is going to be second, etc. Instead of betting on individual matches that are happening soon or even now, futures betting is about the end-result of the entire competition. If you were to predict the champion in the beginning of the event, you could win a lot of money.
Betting on who will be the winner seems like the most straightforward and simple kind of bet, and there is a term for it – moneyline betting. Regardless of whether you’re placing a futures, a pre-match or a live bet, if it’s limited to simply who is going to win, then it’s a moneyline bet.
But if you think you can predict more than just who’s going to win, then you should consider what the other options are. You may have heard of an over/under bet (or O/U), sometimes also called a total bet. An O/U bet is when you predict whether a certain game statistic will be over or under a certain number. For example, you could bet that a certain team is going to win a certain match by a score difference higher than 2 goals.
Or, you may feel certain that you know what the exact score disparity between two teams will be in a given match – then you want to do spread betting. And giving a more precise prediction means winning more money.
But if you’re convinced you know what the future will be, you should do proposition bets. These are wagers about things such as Messi scoring exactly 2 goals for Argentina during the event, or David Raum scoring an own goal. The incredible difficulty, associated with predicting such details, is certainly going to pay off, should you manage to get things right.
And if you actually do know what the future holds, you can place parlay bets. A parlay bet is when the bettor makes multiple predictions about a match, or about more than one match. For example, if you had placed a sizable parlay bet that Argentina would lose to Saudi Arabia and that Japan would win against Germany, you would have made a fortune.
