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Betting, a form of gambling, has been around almost as long as mankind itself. It’s a way to put stakes on winners and losers, and over time has been a method of easy riches, or devastating debt.

What most people don’t know is that when their money goes behind the counter until the results come out,

Bet Managers examine the course of a game and spread sheets during work

is the work that goes on behind the scenes. Roughly 80% of all games across the board, (soccer, football, tennis and so forth), are based on statistics that have been gathered by professionals scraping up every last bit of information on individual competitors before even tallying up numbers on a single team. Still, facts can only go so far. As the experts will say, roughly 20% of all games are a fluke.

That being said, here are the two largest bets ever placed in individual sports.

Football

The Super Bowl long been hailed as the pinnacle of an American pastime, and the money that goes into the stalls is proof of that legacy. Over ten billion dollars is estimated to be spent in bets on the Super Bowl by over 200 million people around the globe. It is one of, if not the, biggest gambling match in the world.

Rugby

Rugby, Football’s brutal ancestor, holds just as much of an impressive place in betting history with a total of $30,200,000 dollars this year; a record setting amount according to New Zealand’s TAB agency.

Since it is extraordinarily difficult to pinpoint exactly how much money a single-person bet on any one sport, (bets are typically placed for a single match, game, or respective play), it’s simpler to bring up the sports that bring in the most bets as a whole.

Additionally, individual bets are more often than not based on that individual’s income. A man in the upper-lower class won’t be blowing off thousands of dollars on a team he speculates will win on a gut instinct. Similarly, even those with means to spend more, the base middle class all the way up to millionaires, aren’t likely to spend more than a few hundred or thousand dollars. Skeptics may say that bets do go on under the table (not managed by a professional broker), but those can’t be accounted for and are usually charged as criminal activities if discovered.

Soccer

In the UK during the world championship of 2010 the betting losses were calculated to be a little over £70 million. This is all just in the UK and only during the world championship. The total betting loss of the whole world would probably be somewhere near £100 billion or even more.

Tips for Potential Bets

1. Never place a bet with the intention to get rich quickly. A hopeful circumstance can very quickly turn into a horrible decision.
2. Don’t bet out of your means. This should be obvious; if you don’t have the money, don’t spend the money.
3. Research your avenues first, leave no statistic unchecked, and no game un-observed. Staying on top of the times and the probabilities of the teams you’re interested in is paramount.
4. Don’t take “insider” information. An “insider”, essentially someone that claims to have overheard plans or strategies in a locker room or other team hang-out, (the truthful and far less mysterious reality of their job), is usually someone that says things beautifully, but has no idea what they mean. The professionals behind the counter have spent years tracking information, which often times reveals patterns that have a solid foundation. Don’t take a bigger risk when already risking something.
5. Expect the Unexpected. Human beings surpass their limits every other day. Of course the general fact is that there are ranges that are completely normal, and they usually hold consistently over time. But if this were true in all ways, then gambling itself would lose its meaning because everything could be predictable. Humans are anything but. You aren’t placing your money on numbers, but people. If charts tell you to put your stakes on one side, but your gut tells you something else, go with whatever you feel most comfortable with. Lady Luck is a fickle mistress, and at the end of the day all you can hope for is her company.

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