How Boxing Bets Work
You’ve probably noticed that sports betting is increasingly high-profile these days. The sports betting sector has gone from a relative niche industry to a global phenomenon.
While much of the betting action, particularly in a World Cup year, is focused on football betting sites, there is increasing demand for betting opportunities across all sports, including boxing. The same qualities of spectacle, technical skill and luck that make boxing such a compelling sport to follow also make it an ideal medium for betting.
It also helps that in the US, where many of the world’s biggest fights are staged, has been going through a sports betting revolution since 2018, with a majority of states now allowing sports betting in some form. That in turn has pushed bookmakers offering odds on the big fights in Las Vegas and New York to be more inventive and offer ever more competitive terms as they compete for customers.
As with all forms of betting, you should never bet with money you can’t afford to lose, and for the vast majority of boxing bettors, it is a minor addition to their boxing-watching routine. But if you are considering a small wager on the next big fight, where do you start?
Types of Boxing Bets
Open up the boxing section of any sports betting site and you are met with an array of betting options. Some are self-explanatory but many are not. So we’ve put together a short guide that will help you to get to grips with the basics of boxing betting types.
Fight Winner
This is the most popular betting market and the easiest to follow. For any bout, bookmakers will list the two fighters and provide odds on each winning the fight. In some cases, there will be odds given for the draw, while other Fight Winner markets will declare bets void, resulting in all stakes being returned, in this case.
The basics of this market operate identically to other forms of betting. To take a simple example, you might see a Fight Winner market on an upcoming fight that looks like this:
- Deontay Wilder 1/8
- Robert Helenius 5/1
If you bet £10 on Helenius and he wins, you will win £50 (£10 stake x 5/1). A £10 winning bet on Deontay Wilder, on the other hand, would win you £1.25 (£10 x 1/8).
Will It Go the Distance?
As you can probably imagine, given that many fights are, on paper at least, relatively one-sided events, the Fight Winner markets will often feature a short-priced favorite and a long-odds underdog. While it is possible to find value in a betting market at any odds, many boxing bettors don’t like to wager at very short odds so other markets, like this one, can be more appealing.
In this case, the market presents a simple Yes or No option. It is a proposition that can be more interesting for a boxing fan to weigh up as it involves assessing not just the relative merits of the two fighters, but also their fighting styles.
Victory Method
This is another popular betting market and a variation on the previous option. In this case, you are betting on how the fight will be won. Boxing bettors who know their fighters will be at an advantage over the casual boxing bettor here. These markets usually include the following options for each of the fighters:
- Technical knockout
- Technical decision
- Straight knockout
- Disqualification
- Points
- Draw
You may also find that the various options can be grouped together. For example, in the case of the Wilder v Helenius fight, you might see this option:
- Wilder wins on KO/TKO/Technical Decision 2/9
- Wilder wins on Points 6/1
Round Betting
If you don’t think the odds in the Fight Winner market are appealing, you can take a look at the various markets for which round the fight will end in. There are often several of these, but the main Round Betting option will simply list the options from First Round through to Last Round with odds set for each.
Sometimes you can find Grouped Round Betting, which will divide the rounds into groups of two or three, which can be handy if you can’t choose between two rounds. Other markets also combine the number of the round with the name of the winner.
Over/Under Rounds
This is an interesting variation on the typical Round Betting options. In this market, the bookmaker will set a quote, usually in half-rounds, for when they think the fight will end and you have to decide whether it will go longer or shorter than the quote.
A typical quote for this market might be 7.5 or 6.5. Although this is a simple bet with only two options – Over or Under, the bookmaker will set the quote close to where the market thinks the fight will end, so both options will have odds that are close to Even money, providing a potentially more attractive way to bet on the favourite.
If you want to make any of the above mentioned boxing bets, you can find a betting platform for that at Match.Center which provides a lot of useful information about bookmakers and their offers.