Events That See the Highest Betting Volumes

Dozens of different events glue millions of eyeballs to screens. Yet, which ones do people most like to wager on? Various firms and organizations have done research into this field, coming up with their annual guesses. These are not numbers set in stone. Moreover, sadly, not all events pique different entities’ staffs to run the numbers and project how many bets have likely gotten put on them. So, below, we present you the five we could get info on, which boast impressive estimates.

The FIFA World Cup

Of course, the first place must get reserved for the FIFA World Cup. It is, without argument, the most interest-generating event on the planet, with over five billion people watching the 2022 competition and more than 1.5 billion tuning in to see who would walk away with the contest trophy. As of writing, twenty-two final tournaments have been held, with the initial one happening in 1930 in Uruguay.

Over the course of the past century, the competition format has changed a few times, and only eight national teams have entered the last stage of this contest, which technically runs for two years if one counts its qualification stage. Per Bloomberg, $35 billion in wagers got placed on the 2022 Qatar Cup, representing a 65% boost from the 2018 tournament organized in Russia. According to sector experts, the significant jump in betting action the World Cup saw in 2022 primarily was owed to online gambling gaining an ever-stronger foothold in Latin/North America and Europe. It is essential to mention that the adjusted kick-off times to suit Europeans did loads to help in this department. Africa is also seeing a significant increase in its population wagering on football, with Asia remaining the most restrictive continent regarding sports gambling fun.

The Super Bowl

In the United States, the Super Bowl is a much bigger happening than what the World Cup means globally. The annual final of the National Football League of the US got watched by 123.7 million viewers in America in 2024. It has no competition in this arena, as nothing else can pull these numbers in the Land of The Free.

The first Bowl occurred in 1967, and from 2022, this NFL final took place on the second Sunday in February, when the two top teams in American football met to compete for the Vince Lombardi Trophy. The American Gaming Association (AGA), in February of 2024, came out with an estimate that around $23 billion would get bet on the 2024 Bowl, a number that is an increase of $7 billion compared to the 2023 figure. Nevertheless, only $1.5 billion got projected as wagers that would get put down at legalized US-based sportsbooks. The rest are bets made with internationally-regulated platforms or with illegal bookies. The AGA guessed that one in every four Americans probably wagered on the 2024 NFL final.

The Kentucky Derby

Undoubtedly, the horse race most synonymous with thoroughbred racing is the Kentucky Derby, run at the Churchill Downs track in Louisville, Kentucky. It is a race whose distance is two thousand and twelve meters, or one and a quarter miles. Customarily, it gets organized on May’s first Saturday and is the Triple Crown’s initial leg. Nicknamed the Run for the Roses, it first got run in 1875, and in 2024, the Derby marked its century-and-a-half milestone. During this period, the race got rescheduled only twice. In 2020, due to the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic, and in 1945, on account of World War II.

What is interesting about the 2024 race is that it is the first one since mobile sports wagering got legalized in its native state. Moreover, this contest set a record handle of $320 million across all sources, a year-on-year boost of 11% compared to the 2023 number of $288 million. For a horse race, that is loads.

The Grand National

Sticking with horse races, here is the UK equivalent of the Kentucky Debry, the Grand National, an event of prominent significance for British culture. The Grand National is an older race than the Kentucky Derby, happening since 1839, ran at the Aintree Racecourse in Merseyside, England. That is a three-course venue owned by Jockey Club Racecourses, whose Grand National course is three kilometers and six hundred twenty-one meters long, or two miles and two furlongs. It boasts three open ditches and sixteen fences. Plus, a jump over water. Many have called this course one of the most difficult to complete, and the venue’s other two ones bear the names Mildmay and Hurdles.

The 2024 race allegedly generated £250 million in bets while attracting one hundred and fifty thousand fans who walked through the gates of the Aintree Racecourse and fifty million more who watched through streams and on TV. For comparison’s sake, in 2021, the Grand National notched a betting handle of $137.4, and it got dubbed Britain’s most significant online sports betting event ever. Naturally, that was because of the COVID-19 pandemic closing down betting shops across Britain at that time.

March Madness

For all the non-US readers, March Madness is the name Americans use for the NCAA Division I basketball (single-eliminator) tournament that happens in the third month of every year. Its games get broadcast over multiple TV stations, like TNT, CBS, and TBS, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 14 million US residents, tune in each year to find out who will be the college basketball king of the US. What is surprising is that this figure is larger than what the NBA finals get, whose betting volume no one has estimated as of late.

The AGA projected that $2.7 billion in wagers got placed on both the women’s and men’s college basketball tournaments in 2024, a 2.2% increase from 2023. We should also note is that, per a report from Eilers and Krejcik Gaming, probably 35% to 40% of bets are in-game ones or wagers made when contests are still active and transpiring. This entity’s handle projections mimicked AGA’s one, as the American Gaming Association projected that close to $2.68 billion got bet on the 2024 March Madness tournament.  

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