2014 World Cup Betting
While my website is primarily focused on Fantasy Football in the United States. I recently found that I have received some visitors from Europe because of the keyword "Football". Since people were already looking for soccer, I thought it might be useful to include a page that gives an overview of the biggest soccer competition in the world.
This June, the World Cup will begin in Brazil. The 32 nations have already qualified and have been put into one of eight groups. Each group will have four teams in the group, which will be labelled from Group A to Group H. The teams in each group will play each other one time. After these preliminary games have been played, the top two teams from each group will advanced to the second round.
The second round will feature the first ranked teams in each group will face the second ranked team in another group. The winners of these games will meet in the Quarterfinals, then the Semi Finals and then the Final game. That is a completely simplified version of the World Cup, but we had to start somewhere.
When it comes to the gambling community, the World Cup as a whole is the only event that can compare with the Super Bowl. In fact, world cup betting is more popular in most corners of the world than the NFL is in the United States. There is two main ways to place bets on the World Cup: 1) You can bet on the winner of the World Cup before the event kicks off or 2) You can bet on the individual matches that will be played.
If you want to bet on the country that will win the World Cup, you will need to know each teams odds of winning. Currently, the host country, Brazil, is the favorite at 3 to 1 odds. Argentina has the second best odds at 4 to 1 and all of the six South American teams have better odds than the United States. Columbia, Uruguay and Chile all have decent odds to win.
The other favorites are all from Europe. This includes Germany at 5 to 1, Spain at 13 to 2, and Belgium at 13 to 1 odds to win. There is a total of 13 European countries in the World Cup and the majority of them have odds better than 100 to 1. This is better than any country that isn't located in South America or Europe. The main reason for this is that no team outside of these two continents have ever won this competition.
Mexico won the Gold medal in the 2012 Olympics, but struggled in the qualifications, which is why they are currently at 130 to 1 odds. The United States is in a brutal group with Germany, Portugal and Ghana. They are not favored to get out of the qualification round and have current odds at 160 to 1.
You can also bet on World Cup single matches. The majority of the wagers will be on the money line. There are three money lines for a soccer match: one on each side that is playing and one on the draw. The draw is only available in the preliminary round. You might see a money line like this: United States (+350) vs Germany (-250) and the Draw (-200). This would mean that a $100 wager on United States would pay out $350 if the U.S. wins. You would have to wager $250 on Germany to win $100 or $200 to win $100 for the match to draw.
These matches are going to be the most popular bets of the summer. Be sure to watch!