Betting on Spain to win the Confederations Cup could net you R15 for every R10 you put down if the European champions take home the title. But don’t let a focus on the outright winner blind you to the more exotic bets to be made. There’s more to stake your money on in this Confed Cup than just who will win.
Warren Tannous, a bookmaker with World Sports Betting, says the number of people betting on soccer has increased dramatically since the Confed Cup began and that many new clients are opening betting accounts specifically for the tournament.
And they’re not just betting on ‘outrightsâ€, or which team will win, but on a variety of ‘exoticsâ€. Punters are placing bets on the number of total goals scored, who’ll score first and second, goal difference and what the final score will be, to name just few.
These ‘in-running†bets, which are resolved during the course of the game, are relatively new on the South African scene and are more common in soccer and cricket than rugby. So punters place more bets, based on different exotics, as the game evolves.
‘They sit at their laptops and bet while they’re watching,†says Tyrone Dobbin, operations manager at www.greatodds.com.
He points to the New Zealand-Spain match as an example. More bets were placed on this match than on the South Africa-Iraq match because there was greater variation during the game.
‘After Torres scored three goals, all of a sudden there were bets on Spain scoring five or six goals.â€
Dobbin says in-running betting now accounts for more than 50% of turnover at the organisation.
The bookmakers agree that South Africans are betting with their heads, not their hearts.
‘Where a country is doing well, that’s where they’ll put their money,†says Hilton Hasson, owner of online betting site Pearl Betting.
So while South Africans are still backing the national teams in the Twenty20 and the Lions tour, they’re less enthusiastic when it comes to the Confed Cup. Here, Spain is still the favourite to win, their odds having ‘shortened†or strengthened following hard-fought wins by Brazil and Italy. For South Africa, meanwhile, the odds are between 25/1 and 33/1, depending on who you ask.
Tannous says he estimates the South African betting industry as a whole could take ‘in the hundreds of millions, close to a billion rand in wagers†in the few weeks that the Confed Cup is running. ‘I don’t think anyone actually realises how big the betting industry is in South Africa and how much it has grown,†he says.
Thanks to a change in tax laws last July, more punters are placing bets with local bookmakers. Previously, government levied a 6% tax on betting returns, leading many to place bets overseas instead.
‘That 6% is very important. It may not sound like a lot but over a period of time that all adds up,†says Chris Sturdy, who co-owns the online sports betting community Good for the Game.
The revenue government formerly got from punters now comes from bookmakers. ‘Basically, we pay the tax right now instead of you, the punter,†says Hasson.
This change in tax laws put South Africa in line with the United Kingdom and Australia, which do not tax punters on their earnings.
Many bookmakers believe government made the right move in binning the betting tax.
According to Tannous, the change in tax laws, combined with the betting and pricing structures that bookmakers put in place to remain competitive while the tax was still in place, has brought many South Africans back to local betting sites. And bookmakers – and government – are benefiting. Hasson says Pearl Betting has doubled its turnover from sports bets in the last year.