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Heading into the Nigeria vs. Iran matchup Monday afternoon, the 2014 World Cup had thus far yielded an 11-1 result for those bettors/punters backing the OVER.
“The 2010 World Cup was a cautious tournament, with unprecedented attention from the world viewership, teams played defensively and scoring was low,” a spokesperson from Pinnacle Sports told Covers.com Monday. “With 2014 seeing a similar increase in viewership and exposure to the public and that history in hand, bookmakers felt we'd see similar results. We were wrong.”
And the result has been massive losses, at least when it comes to the totals.
“Bettors took advantage of it and created a bloodbath,” the head of Pinnacle sportsbook tells Covers. “Bettors do generally lean towards the Over in soccer and World Cup specifically. In this case, that leaning has been both heavy and dead on.”
Nigeria and Iran not only managed the first Draw of this year's World Cup, they also stopped the bleeding if only for a bit with their 0-0 draw.
The true test for North America-facing bookmakers came Monday night with Sportsbook.ag reporting more than 86% of the bets going towards Team USA in their threepeat World Cup appearance against now rival Ghana. The result was a USA 2-1 victory.
“The amount of traffic coming to the Gambling911.com website from those looking for odds on the Ghana vs. USA game is substantial,” noted G911 Senior Editor Payton O’Brien earlier in the day. “If this is any indication of the actual betting activity on this matchup, bookmakers could be in for an even bigger bloodbath come Monday evening should USA actually win.
“Bookmakers will be the only folks in the US rooting for Ghana we suspect.”
- Don Shapiro, Gambling911.com
