Scanning the Olympics 2012 betting markets at the online sports betting exchange, Betfair, I stumbled into the Brazil vs Belarus football game that is taking place on July 29th. Betting online on football may not be my area of expertise but I found it strange that there two identical matched bets at two different markets of this football game. These include the Next Goal and Over/Under 1.5 Goals markets. Total matched amount of both betting markets is €32,467 split into two identical bets. The volume of bets has placed this game in 10th spot of the football betting markets sorted by the most amount of money matched and that is how I first stumbled into this strange online betting activity.
Brazil vs Belarus football game may seem popular among bettors judging by the total amount matched, but that is far from the truth, especially regarding these two specific betting markets. If you need to bet online which team will score the next goal or whether there will be 2 goals or more, Betfair is not the bookmaker to choose, since there’s almost no liquidity at all to match your bet to begin with!
Moving on to the betting graphs showing the betting pattern of these bets, we quickly realize that we may be talking about the same bettor or betting party. With no bettors interested to bet online on Next Goal as the image above proves, I found it peculiar that €16,234 has been matched at 1.20 and the same amount matched at 1.25!
The same strange betting pattern is present for the Over/Under 1.5 Goals betting market. Again €16,234 has been matched at 1.25 and 1.40 bringing the total matched amount to the same figure as before!
Now, I may be inexperienced when it comes to football betting or trading at Betfair, but I certainly know the whereabouts when it comes to Betfair trading, more specifically in long term trading and trading the odds of UK horse racing. However I had never met such a strange online betting activity in any event. Perhaps London 2012 Olympics betting hides more surprises in the future. I’m sure this is the first one, at least before Olympics begin!
