Betting on football is huge in Portugal. Each game of the main football championship in Portugal (Liga NOS) generates an average of €32 million in bets. Online bookmakers receive forecasts from around the world worth €288 million each round. In the case of a match between the main national teams – Benfica, FC Porto and Sporting – bets can reach upwards of one hundred million euros.
In the Championship of Portugal, the money involved is €122,000 per game. In the II League, the average amount per match is around five million.
In other words, this means that each daily round of professional football reaches €340 million in bets.
These figures were provided to officials (both sports authorities and police) by Sportradar, a betting monitoring company working for FIFA.
Unfortunately, investments whose origins are hard to trace always open up the possibility of groups interested in manipulating results – so-called match fixing, a major concern at the moment.
Original article: DN (Spanish)
