The third day of the world cup ushered in a lot of tension especially amongst Nigerian supporters, as most of them anticipated a win considering the huge amount of money that was pumped into the team by regulators, as well as from different sponsors.
Sport betting centres and relaxation spots where also not left out of these activities too.
Within the hours of 8am to 7pm, before the commencement of the Nigeria versus Croatia match, sports betting centres where overcrowded with bet participants who wanted to make some money on the match as the population trooping into the bet centre hit over 500 people as against that recorded the first day.
Average betting stake also surged 200 percent to N3000 from the N1000 amount that was put by sport lovers on the first day the event began according to the data collected by BusinessDay.
BusinessDay investigated that most of this stackers put their money on the Nigeria team to either win or draw, while a very few of them staked theirs on a win for Croatia.
BusinessDay spoke with some of the stackers to get reasons why they preferred to stake against their own country, many alleged that the odds for the Nigerian side to win was very high especially judging from their last three friendlies performance where they performed poorly as it will be impossible for them to beat a side like Croatia that has proven to be much more organized in the field of play.
Betting odds represent the probability of an event to happen and therefore enable you to work out how much money you will win if your bet wins.
The odds for Nigeria to win was 3.12 while that of the Croatian side was 2.11, what this means is that if they had taken the odds of 3.12 and stake over N10,000 it would have hit an amount of over N30,000 minus bonuses.
BusinessDay also noticed that the usual N50, 000 that is being used to credit bet operator’s accounts also saw an increase to N150, 000 on this very day.
This increase was replenished twice by each of the attendants, and these betting centres have a total of seven attendants giving a clearer picture on the amount Nigerians staked on Saturdays match in a particular betting centre, which was accumulatively over one million naira.
The virtual also produced a whooping sum of N200, 000 with reasons being that the claims for participants of virtual game brings a much faster return.
The average amount spent per game on virtual was N100 with an individual staking more than 20 times, due to this simulation keeps running throughout the day providing results every two minutes as we observed.
Relaxation spots made a high amount of profits on Saturday most especially during the Nigeria match since it was more of a home game.
Looking at the spot which was used as a case study for the Saturday match the manager showed signs of excitement noting that on a neutral weekend (When games like this were not played), the hub sees customers not up to 250 on a single Saturday, but on this day they had an excess of more than the regular customers.
BusinessDay also witnessed customers standing just to cheer the eagles even as the match was on going as more and more people continually made live bets as the match unfolds.
Business day noticed that these customers spent close to N50, 000 on a single bet and as some people lost and others gained winners of this bet also patronised the hub for more drinks which definitely put a smile on the face of the hub management.
At the end of the Nigeria match over 60 percent lost their bets while 40 percent had winnings to claim which means more money for the bet company and also more money for the hubs that aired the match since they the industry operates a non-refunding policy.
