French punters bet 19.2m on Olympics
GGR of 3.3m recorded - football edges out basketball as most popular sport.
French punters placed 19.2m worth of bets during the London Olympics, regulatory authority ARJEL has confirmed in an update on the games.
Gross gaming revenue for the three weeks of the games reached 3.3m, with the second week contributing just under half of this total.
Overall, just under 1.9million bets were placed, with football the most popular sport with a 20% contribution to the 19.2m total, closely followed by basketball (19%), handball (17%) and tennis (15%). ARJEL also noted that athletics (5%) and swimming (4%) were far more popular than normal during the Olympics.
The two days with the highest turnover were 31 July and 1 August, with approximately 1.6m bet on both days. The former of the two days involved fixtures for the French men’s handball team and the country’s leading tennis player Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, while the two-day period saw France win medals in swimming and group games in men’s and women’s basketball.
Earlier this week Betfair revealed that cycling saw a high betting turnout, particularly on mobile devices, while sports betting turnover in the UK has been estimated at between £80m and £100m.
In an opinion piece for eGaming Review on Wednesday, Sporting Index commercial director Mark Maydon described the games as having “Broken all records when it comes to Olympics betting,” with the strong performance of the host nation helping towards that end.