Football is the most popular and played sport in the entire planet with the World Cup attracting millions of viewers every 4 years and turning into one of the most watched sporting events ever as fans tuned in to watch their respective nations compete against some of the best squads in the world with hope of lifting the most prestigious silverware in the sport.
Having so much fans and people from all corners of the world has turned football into something much more than just a sport as it represents something much more valuable for certain nations but at the same time it has started to serve as an income for fans, players and even managers as they try to predict what the outcome of a certain match will be with some of them even attempting to rig or manipulate the results with the final objective of it being to get a result that would award them with cash.
Joe Saumarez Smith is a sports betting consultant and he has admitted saying to the media that football is by far the largest betting market in the entire world due to the vast amount of matches that are being played and that can be manipulated without much difficulty.
“Football is by far the largest betting market in the world and by far the most liquid.A lot of players are not very well paid and, particularly in the African leagues, they don’t get paid … so match-fixing becomes more attractive,” Saumarez Smith says.
For those of you thinking of having a bet on Euro 2016 at WilliamHill you might be interested to know that during the 2014 edition of the World Cup, Spain was one of the heavy favorites on defending their title and winning the worldwide event but their abysmal and shocking early exit was not only a surprise for fans of the Spanish squad but for people that took their chance and waged a hefty amount of money to see the team of Vicente del Bosque claiming another title but ultimately failing on doing so.