Football fever

This article first appeared in the Mar/Apr 2014 issue of World Gaming magazine.

WGM is pleased to present the first in a series in which we look at Asian sports betting trends thanks to Asia’s leading sportsbook platform provider ONEworks. This issue, we examine the five biggest football games of 2013.

It’s no secret that football is hugely popular throughout Asia – particularly the European leagues where big clubs such as Manchester United, Barcelona and Real Madrid attract a massive following. The great thing about Asian football fans is just how knowledgeable they are – a fact evidenced by their betting patterns on the English Premier League, European Champions League and other major competitions.

Asia’s leading sportsbook platform provider, ONEworks, supplied WGM with some fascinating stats from 2013 which show the five biggest football games of the year as far as betting is concerned and it’s clear the punters know a mouth-watering clash when they see it.

Surprisingly, only one EPL game made the cut with Manchester United’s clash with fierce rivals Liverpool in January 2013 ranking fourth with 18.394 percent of the total turnover generated by those five games combined.

The other four big games of 2013 were all played in the Champions League with the all-German final between Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund coming out on top with 23.281 percent of turnover. In fact, Dortmund featured in three of the games while Spanish giants Real Madrid also appealed, as did rivals Barcelona.

Asian bettors are renowned for their ability to find a good price and tend to wait until two hours before kick-off to start placing their bets, in order to ensure they have as much information available to them as possible. These days around 70 percent of turnover is generated through in-play betting. Some games can see that figure climb to over 80 percent!

The Asian market is booming and this is one of the many reasons Asian sportsbooks thrive over European books even when they are operating on tiny margins.

*Stats supplied by ONEworks