Baseball. While the earliest records of the game reach back to 18th-century England, the modern game is most certainly an American concept. With the MLB 2023 season well underway, we look at why Baseball betting sites are only growing in popularity.
Existing Popularity
In 2023, Major League Baseball already controls a decent portion of all betting activity. Cited by American gambling journalists as the third most popular market behind only the NFL and NBA, baseball enjoys a healthy presence in the US marketplace. In 2022, the Fantasy Sports and Gaming Association in America estimated that 31% of US sports betters would place a bet on some kind of baseball market.
While the sport isn’t one of the primary favorites among UK bettors, Australian gamblers rate the sport highly. Down-under it’s remarked to be the seventh most popular with the sports betting population ranking it above tennis, basketball, and motorsports.
British sports fans might be slowly warming to the sport, with the MLB tapping into the market. Last year the league held two games in London and are repeating the exercise again in June 2023 as the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs are set for a two-game series at the London Stadium. What is even better for UK baseball heads is that the majority of the MLB games are free to watch on gambling sites, with Bet365 offering streaming options for games.
In-game market variety
Baseball betting is not only huge in its popularity but in the wealth of markets it offers to budding gamblers. The biggest games from the MLB can have well over a hundred markets to wager on, making for an incredible experience for the baseball fan who wants to try their luck.
Users can predict which period of the game will be the highest scoring, how many hits there will be throughout the game, if X-player will score over Y runs during the match, and even break it down to each inning of play. After all, the baseball super fans might see a change in line-up and know that the Chicago White Sox will score a few runs in a particular inning but still want to back the Boston Red Sox to win the match as a whole. Of course, gamblers can just opt for the winner of the match (commonly known as the Money Line) but the vast selection of markets usually appeals to baseball bettors.
Global Market Availability
One of the best attributes of baseball betting is its thoroughly widespread participation throughout the world. While MLB is the primary competition, there are leagues in Japan, Korea, Mexico, Venezuela, and Australia and that’s not even mentioning all the youth and minor leagues in the US. In addition to baseball seasons usually being very long and having hundreds of games, there’s nearly always an opportunity to bet on baseball making it a very popular option as it’s always open for trade.
In the US, it’s particularly interesting as the MLB season typically doesn’t overlap with the NFL season for very long, meaning that it benefits from the football market’s attention during the offseason, while there are also continuing rumors of expansion teams to expand that market even further.
Methodical pace and chance
While not exclusive to baseball, the sport unlike a lot of other popular sports markets is played at a much slower pace than say soccer or basketball. Those games are consistently moving and changing. While it makes for a great spectator sport, your return could be quashed in a blink of an eye – and when there’s a mismatch between teams, one of them might not get a real chance to score.
Baseball allows even the weakest teams to score. While they might miss, they’re still afforded the opportunity to step up and try. In soccer terms, Manchester City doesn’t allow many teams to even get close to their goal. Baseball’s parameters allow each team to attempt to win. In addition, the pace of the game allows those with a stake in the game to review their wager during key intervals. Six innings might have passed and in the window of time that the players are taking a small break, users can cash out or re-invest their funds as the game has natural pauses.
Data-driven fanbase
Baseball is often more about the numbers that come from the sport, than the sport itself. There are data scientists whose single work objective is to crunch numbers surrounding baseball analytics. A lot of this or similar information is available online to anyone for no cost. For the dedicated sports gambler who has free time to spend researching bets, taking advantage of this knowledge on baseball betting sites is the dream.
Of course, if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for it could be overwhelming but to those who understand the game and its statistics, these datasets allow you to assess player and team performance and make informed decisions on your next bet.
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