2010 World Cup Odds | IXGAMES

The 2010 FIFA World Cup kicks off June 11 in South Africa with a match between the host side and France and doesn’t stop until July 11 with the final at Soccer City in Johannesburg. It’s going to be a fantastic month of soccer drama and we couldn’t be more excited at Bodog’s online sportsbook. While the 2006 World Cup in Germany was big for us, so much has changed since then, and we anticipate smashing all our previous soccer betting records in terms of handle and wagers made. Why are we preparing for one of the busiest betting periods in our history? For starters, the popularity of soccer continues to grow in North America. I’m not talking about the MLS, but rather the following of the world’s elite leagues and players. We can thank the internet for a lot of that. No other development has been more crucial to the spreading of the Beautiful Game’s gospel in the United States and Canada, where fans not too long ago were forced to search high and low for soccer coverage from traditional media. Now fans can get everything they need simply by logging on. Remember, four years ago YouTube was barely a year old. Think how far the internet’s come since then in terms of things like streaming of video. From a betting standpoint, the wagering options at Bodog have also grown leaps and bounds in the past few years. For the 2010 World Cup, we have a plethora of soccer props and futures for our players to consider. It’s not just a matter of which team is going to win the match or how many goals will be scored. Who’s going to be the top goal-scorer in the tournament? Which team is going to win each group? What will be the exact score of each game? Who will be leading at halftime? Who’s going to score first? Who’s going to score last? Will there be a red card? We’ve even got props on the number of corner kicks. Our bettors love to make as many as wagers as possible on games. They don’t want to have to wait until the end of the match to find out if they’ve won. They want the action to start right away. You can blame our instant-gratification culture for that I suppose. As far as which teams we anticipate being popular with our players, tournament favorites like Brazil, Spain, Argentina, Italy, Germany and Holland should all garner plenty of interest from bettors. Obviously, we’d like to see the United States make a run. Fortunately, the U.S. doesn’t have the toughest competition in the group stage. England will be tough to beat, but Slovenia and Algeria are manageable. On that note, I imagine we’ll also be cheering for England, which is always a high-profile side in international competition, even among non-English supporters. The Three Lions have high hopes as usual for the 2010 World Cup, but the pressure will be enormous for a squad that has come up short so many times in the past. By Richard Gardner – Bodog Sportsbook Manager