The football World Cup is expected to suck in over one billion pounds and that’s just in the betting markets.  That is a lot.  With bookmakers fighting each other to attract the most money at the World Cup there are some interesting goal betting markets that have appeared.  This post takes a quick look at some of the antepost World Cup goal bets available.

Sporting index offer spread betting on the World Cup. Some of the spread bets offered include the ‘stop at a’ markets.  You are invited to bet on how many World Cup matches will be played before;

a 0-0 draw
a score draw (0-0, 1-1, 2-2)
a player to score a hat-trick

In the 2006 World Cup the first 0-0 draw was the 4th game.  If sporting index are offering a spread of 9.5 – 10.5, they are predicting that the first draw will be in the 9th, 10th, or 11th game. If the first 0-0 draw is after 4 games as with the 2006 World Cup would return 5.5 times your stake (£10 x difference between Sell Price/ 9.5 and Result/4 = £55).  Although this is not a bet we would recommend because the risk is too much for the reward.  Imagine if there where no 0-0 draws, ouch!  Following that line of thought a ‘score draw’ goal bet wouldn’t be good either.

The player to score a hat-trick spread bet is a lot more attractive. Over the last 12 years there has been a trend of lower and lower total goals scored at the world cup.  From an average of 2.7 goals per game in 1998 and 2.3 goals per game in 2006.  That trend suggests that we shouldn’t expect many goals in the World Cup, let alone three being scored by the same player.

In fact, in 2006 there were no hat-tricks scored at all. Lets say Sporting Index predict that a hat trick will be scored during 25th to 27th game.  If you choose to bet low or ‘sell’ you could win 25 times your stake  (£10 x difference between Sell Price/25 and Result/0 = £250) .

Now that’s a tasty thought.  Sporting index are offering hundreds of pounds worth of free spread bets at the moment so there’s no harm in getting the most from World Cup goals with a spread bet. Sporting Index have some good demonstrations and plenty of worked examples if you need to learn more about football goal spread bets. In addition there is a guide to sports spread betting in the spread betting section to your right.