There’s a myth that it’s not cared about anywhere else in the world and few European people watch it. Reality is far from this – there are some massive European basketball leagues and the sport is equally popular in different continents and countries.
It’s a sport with progressive growth, particularly in the betting sector. Loads of sports fans are betting on basketball and it’s widely available at all the non GamStop sportsbooks listed on CasinoGam.uk. The sport is so popular to bet on that it’s risen through the ranks and is now only behind soccer, tennis and horse racing in terms of how many people bet on it!
You might be new to basketball betting (which is why you’ve clicked on this) so you’ll be glad to know there are more ways to bet on the sport than choosing the outcome alone. Here are the best ways to place your bets – they give a combination of reasonable odds and a fairly high chance of coming true.
A classic betting market that’s worth looking into when you’re a basketball fan. Bookies will set a points target and you have to guess if it will be over or under. For example, you could bet on whether there will be over 184.5 points in the entire match. This means if there are 185 points or more, you win the bet!
It’s a popular basketball betting market because it’s somewhat easy to predict by looking at the teams and their points-scoring histories. If both teams regularly score 90+ points in a match, you know there’s a reasonable chance of them scoring above 180 points when they play against one another.
Moreover, you can use websites like Proballers to get tonnes of stats about teams before they play. This particular site always includes an H2H matchup so you can see which team wins and the average points scored when they face one another. It should help you get a nice over/under bet.
Handicap betting is excellent when there’s a clear favourite for a basketball match. It’s a massively popular market during Olympic Basketball as you see loads of one-sided contests – especially when the USA is involved.
What is a handicap bet? Effectively, you’re betting on a team to win with a points handicap against them. Betting on Team USA to win with a handicap of -15.5 means they start the game with 15.5 points taken away. Winning your bet means Team USA has to:
This will mean the final score puts them in the lead even when you account for the -15.5 handicap. As a result, you’ll get far better odds than if you bet on them to win the match itself. You’re betting on them dominating the game, so it’s always worth trying when there’s a strong indication that one team will be significantly better than the other.
You can already guess what this means; you predict which quarter will see the most points.
A simple bet, yet a great one for basketball fans for two amazing reasons:
When the game gets close to ending, both teams are eager to score as many points as possible before the buzzer. Especially when it’s a tight game as both sets of players want to win! Will you win this bet every time if you put money on the fourth quarter? No, of course not.
Still, we think it’s a smart bet in tight encounters or important matches. If two teams are vying for a trophy or a gold medal, they will leave everything out on the court in the last quarter. That’s when it’s good to place this bet and have a big chance of winning.
Soccer fans will know this betting market as a simple Yes/No wager. In that sport, you’re betting on whether both teams will score. We already know that’s the case in basketball – the lowest points total by a team in NBA history is 18 by the Lakers in 1950. There’s never been an instance of a side not scoring at least 1 point!
Keeping that in consideration, the both teams to score market is different in basketball. Instead of betting on if both teams will score, you bet on how many points they will score. You can do this by quarter for better odds or look at the game as a whole. Sticking a bet on both teams to score 100 points is unlikely to come through – but you could bet on them to both score 80 points and have a great chance of winning.
The bottom line is that basketball matches offer loads of fun ways to bet. Please remember to gamble responsibly and recognise that this post is for fun. Betting on any of these markets won’t guarantee you win, but they can increase your chances when compared with other basketball betting options.
