If the action seen by the Bodog sportsbook is any indication, sports gambling enthusiasts would have no problems accepting football all year.The NFL season runs from the beginning of September to the beginning of February, with NCAA conferences seeing similar schedules (except when there’s a pesky coronavirus in the way), and football has continued to claim the top spot for wagers on Bodog since the NFL season began. That trend continued this past weekend and probably won’t go away until after next February.
NFL and college football games covered 86.8% of the wagers on Bodog this past weekend, with the NFL capturing 45.94% of the action. The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) picked up third place, but a far-away 3.24%. The UFC ticket proved to be more interesting than soccer and tennis, with the English Premier League getting 2.2% and the Paris Masters taking 1.92% of bets. After that, the Breeders Cup made an appearance with 1.63%, the Chinese Basketball Association grabbed just over 1% and cricket grabbed a spot for the second week in a row, but only with 0.87% of what was thrown Bodog’s way.
As the turnout would indicate, football games also captured all ten top spots on the sportsbook’s list for the weekend, with the NFL seeing the most. The Sunday game between the New Orleans Saints and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers proved to be the most tempting, and probably the most lucrative for Bodog, as 24.36% of the wagers seen by the sportsbook were on this game. With the Saints taking an underdog win of 38-3, and most bets going to the Bucs to win, this was a lopsided game.
The Dallas Cowboys/Pittsburgh Steelers matchup proved to be enticing to sports bettors and pulled in 12.28% of the wagers on Bodog. This game almost didn’t go the way anyone had expected, but the Steelers ultimately pulled off a victory to remain undefeated on the season. The highly-anticipated contest between two undefeated NCAA teams, the Clemson Tigers and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, was a huge draw and captured 10.4% of the Bodog wagers. Bettors got their money’s worth as the game was forced into overtime to decide the winner, but the Fighting Irish pulled off a 47-40 win and forced the Tigers to 7-1 on the season.
Two NFL games – Miami Dolphins/Arizona Cardinals and Baltimore Ravens/Indianapolis Colts – then followed with a little more than 9% each. College football snuck back in as the game between the Miami Hurricanes and the NC State Wolfpack grabbed 7.29% of the wagers on the way to a Canes 44-41 victory. The NFL would pick up two more top spots with the Carolina Panthers/Kansas City Chiefs and the Las Vegas Raiders/LA Chargers games, but another college contest would round out the list. The Florida Gators took on the Georgia Bulldogs, added 6.16% of the wagers on Bodog as the Gators cruised to a 44-28 win.
