The rapid growth of sports betting sites in emerging markets has been occurring in different regions throughout the world, particularly as opportunities for viewing many of the biggest sporting events in the world becomes more available through a variety of online services. Of these growing markets, India is certainly towards the top as sports fandom continues to rise but which are the most popular sports in the region for betting?
Field Hockey – Being the national game of India, it’s expected that this would be a great starting point for betting to take off. The market is very rationalised to India being the most populous fandom for the game, but there have been plenty of international players too. With the low scoring nature of the game, it adds a lot of risk to bets but also makes betting as a whole on field hockey much more thrilling – with a wide variety of betting markets available for the sport and the growing support for these services, there’s plenty of opportunity within hockey betting.
Cricket – Whilst field hockey may be the national game of India, it’s hard to deny how enormous and how impactful cricket is within the country – and is likely much larger than hockey too, being the most popular sport in the country. With international competition every year and India being amongst the best cricketing countries in the world, betting sites in India relish the opportunities at major cricket events as do the fans. With huge value attributed to many of the star players and many even moving internationally to play in the biggest Indian cricket leagues, it’s easy to see why the sport is so popular, and why the betting market for the sport is so big too.
Football – India shares a bit of a love and hate relationship with football – whilst some consider it to be the second most popular sport in the country behind cricket, there are also times some regions within the country have a distaste for it. With the growing support for India-specific wagers giving a unique opportunity to players within India, and a well-established football betting market around the world as it continues to be one of the biggest sports in many other countries, there are certainly growing opportunities for the football betting market to grow further in certain parts of the country as fans experience the growth of betting services.
Whilst support is growing, the next step may certainly be to ensure that there are safety regulations to ensure the safety of newer players and has always been one big hiccup in the growing online betting industry – there are blueprints from other countries successes, however, which can certainly aide in supporting the growth. With three huge sports to help the growth, it won’t be long before India catches up with many other big betting countries and may even surpass them.
