Betting on sports has a long tradition in many European countries and from there, it spread pretty much all over the world. Its spread was sped up incredibly by the emergence of the internet: players from all over the world can instantly check out the latest odds at the Betway online sports betting website, place a bet on their favourite team or athlete to boost the thrill of following a sporting event.
Although it’s called “sports betting”, and is mostly related to sports, there are other things that bookmakers like to cover. These are often called “specials” or “novelty bets” and they can sometimes be pretty surprising.
Pop culture
People are competing in many things, from cooking and baking to singing and other creative crafts. Most of these competitions are televised and they can attract massive audiences – in the UK, the “Great British Bakeoff” and Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares” have broken pretty much every record when it comes to their viewership.
As you might expect, bookmakers also like to cover reality shows. Among others, you can bet on The Masked Singer, a talent show with Rita Ora among the judges, and Dancing on Ice. By the way, Kiwi dancer Brendan Cole is the most likely to win the latter.
But reality shows are not the only ones covered by bookmakers. Among others, you can bet on awards, including the Oscars, the next James Bond (Richard Madden is currently the favourite), and the next actor to play the iconic Doctor Who.
Space
Over the years, bookmakers have offered their users a series of specials on things ranging from the most trivial – like the weather – to much more serious ones, like whether the scientists from Earth will discover life on other planets before the end of the decade. Today, the list of current events covered by bookies has grown with something that keeps many of us on the edge of our seats: the ongoing Billionaire Space Race.
There are currently two markets covered by Betway in this category. One of them is crossing the Karman line – the point where the atmosphere officially ends and space officially begin at an altitude of 100 kilometres. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic didn’t even scratch it to date. Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin has passed it briefly. All this while Elon Musk’s SpaceX has taken humans not just beyond it but to the ISS, 400 kilometres above the surface of the Earth. I think it’s clear which one of them will be declared a winner.
But there’s another threshold – the first human on Mars. With the other two billionaire rockets barely scratching the edge of space, SpaceX is currently the favourite, even if it will take Musk a few more years to build a rocket that’s capable of visiting our distant planetary cousin.
Everything else
Some bookies have a list of truly crazy things they accept bets on. Betway, for example, offers its users the possibility to bet on, among others, the location of the first Facebook physical store in the UK, the Netflix series with the more viewers (currently, Squid Game is the favourite), and a handful of truly special Harry Potter bets, including whether J. K. Rowling will appear at the upcoming reunion and whether the show will be used to announce a new, full-length Harry Potter book for next year.
We can hardly wait!
