Special Report: Will the 2019 World Cup enhance cricket betting popularity?

For a few seconds the cricketing world stood still.

Martin Guptill struck the ball. Jason Roy coolly collected it and hurled it into the gloves of Jos Buttler. The wicket-keeper, with a rapid dislodging of the bails, then sent the Home of Cricket into a state of euphoria.

After seven weeks of pulsating one-day international cricket, England had been crowned World Cup winners by the finest of margins.

The awarding of the trophy to the home nation by virtue of most boundaries scored after a tied Super Over sparked controversy.

But, as Nasser Hussain so eloquently put it on the Sky Sports commentary, cricket was the ultimate winner after England’s nerve-shredding final with New Zealand.

Cricket finally seems to have its platform to build on. From Leeds to London, Manchester to Southampton, there was scarcely a region left untouched by the carnival atmosphere of this summer’s World Cup.

But where does international cricket go now? Does it merely dust itself down and retreat to the shadows of other sports like a Christmas decoration being put back in the loft?

With a highly-anticipated Ashes series only weeks away as well as the resumption of the annual Twenty20 Blast competition, it is clear to see why some bookmakers believe this could not be further from the truth.

“I don’t think it’s a one-off. I expect we will now see an uplift in cricket betting popularity, most definitely,” believes Betfair’s Barry Orr, who confirmed that more than £3.5 billion was matched on the firm’s exchange throughout the tournament.

Australia’s group-stage encounter with Pakistan generated the highest volume of money matched on the exchange at the tournament with £132,970,644. The highest in the 2015 World Cup was nearly £50 million less at £84,426,723.

It is easy to overreact to these figures. As Coral cricket trader Andrew Harriott points out: “The last Cricket World Cup was in Australia so the timing was far from great for punters.”

But it is hard to escape the conclusion that this tournament captured the imagination of spectators and punters in a way none of its predecessors did.

The 2019 Cricket World Cup had everything in its favour as far as attracting punters was concerned. Not only would it be gracing such iconic venues as the Oval, Trent Bridge, Headingley and Edgbaston but there was genuine excitement that England could be lifting the trophy on July 14.

Glamorgan's Sophia Gardens was one of a number of venues used at the 2019 Cricket World Cup

There was no major men’s international football tournament to distract attention from it, although a sensational Women’s World Cup proved to be more popular than some anticipated.

Eoin Morgan’s men were 2-1 ante-post favourites ahead of Virat Kohli-led India and a resurgent Australia team and there were more than a fair share of home-nation punts.

“With the tournament being on British soil, it has really been England through-and-through,” said Rupert Adams of William Hill the day before the tournament began.

He believed that going into the tournament, punters “could not be happier or luckier” that such an event had landed in an odd year, where there was no men’s football World Cup or European Championships to whet the betting appetite.

And, as the curtain-raiser between hosts England and South Africa approached, the anticipation ballooned.

England’s outright price was trimmed and inflated as the games rolled by and, despite defeats to Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Australia, they made the semi-finals as initially expected but only after a series of abandonments, due to adverse weather, threatened to mar the tournament. What impact would that have on betting interest?

“We felt we got off to a really good start to the tournament. Turnover was great, we had done a lot of new markets at Coral. It felt like there was momentum in the first week but then the bad weather came in,” said Harriott.

“We don’t get those games back turnover-wise. We expected to lose two or three but to lose four wasn’t great. It felt like it took a week or so to pick up again after the bad weather but then England lost to Sri Lanka which made the group stages more watchable.”

After the Three Lions did their bit to ensure the tournament sprang into life again (that was the only reason they lost to the Lankans, right?), the knockout phase arrived, with England taking on Australia after New Zealand and India locked horns at Old Trafford.

I spent the morning of the first semi-final in Harriott’s company as he took the reins in that day’s cricket trading for Coral.

“It’s a great game to bet on. Of all sports, cricket is made for betting, right from its early days it has had a betting element to it with the way the game is scored. You don’t need to invent many markets,” he said.

Harriott is an experienced cricket trader but even he was left scratching his head, meanwhile using the other hand to keep tabs on an orchestra of computer screens, at how the game unfolded.

New Zealand’s openers made an astonishingly slow start and India exercised their review against Guptill, causing Harriott to suspend betting after the first ball of the game.

The Black Caps crawled to a score of 7-1 after five overs and that sucked punters in to backing them to fall short of their runs line at ten overs. They pushed on and exceeded it. It was an early victory for the bookmakers and the see-saw nature of the game made it easy to see why cricket is such an appealing sport to bet on.

Harriott reiterated the unpredictable nature of cricket means its trading cannot be left to algorithms alone, stating it is “one of the last sports where trading is so dependent on opinion”.

But one comment made by the cricket trader stuck in my head more than any other as I departed Ladbrokes-Coral.

Asked whether betting interest at the Cricket World Cup fell short of or exceeded his expectations, he said: “We have seen increased turnover during this World Cup. We’re pretty pleased with how it’s gone.

“The only thing I’d say is it would have been interesting to know what it would have been like if it had been on terrestrial TV.

"I read somewhere that we’ve been getting about 450,000 people watching the games on Sky which is similar to the number of people who play cricket each weekend.”

Harriott later revealed that Coral took 30 per cent more on the final, which was aired on Channel 4, than any other game at the tournament. The World Cup seemed to have everything in place to draw a bigger crowd but had there been one key ingredient missing to take it to the next level?

Coral's Andrew Harriott was lead cricket trader for the World Cup semi-final between India and New Zealand

An estimated four-and-a-half million viewers tuned in to the final on terrestrial television, with a combined total of eight million watching during the Super Over, and what an advert it was for the sport.

Orr put it simply, saying “common sense tells you the more people who are watching it, the more people are likely to have a financial wager”.

Robert Dixon of William Hill, meanwhile, suggested that while the terrestrial coverage of England matches is unlikely to happen any time soon, a deal whereby the BBC or Channel 4 pick up one Test match per year could be a good initiative.

Dixon confirmed Hills took a record turnover for a World Cup this year and that remains the bottom line.

Betting interest is an excellent indicator of popularity and it is clear this World Cup has blown all previous editions out of the water. A tweet from Betfair trader Mark Iverson revealed that £21 million was matched on the first night of the T20 Blast - a positive sign that domestic cricket is cashing in on a spectacular summer.

Maintaining this interest is paramount and there’s plenty of opportunity to do so with the Ashes on the horizon and the inaugural The Hundred tournament in 2020.

The World Cup came home but, although it is heading in the right direction, there’s work to be done before the same can be said about cricket itself.

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