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WHY WRESTLING BETTING BECAME SO POPULAR IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

By Kendall Jenkins on 2021-02-26 10:01:00

People in the United Kingdom have enjoyed placing bets on sports for centuries. Bettors put money on outcomes in all kinds of sports, from football and rugby to horse racing and motorsports. 

Many of those who bet choose to do so online due to convenience and the amount of choice available to them. The online betting industry is now worth over £2 billion in the UK, with around 80% of this income coming from the sports sector.

WWE wrestling is also growing in popularity. While WWE usually has predetermined winners, these are kept top secret by organisers and participants, meaning that audiences are free to place bets on their favourites to win. WWE can be described as a type of sports entertainment as it combines competitive sporting with theatrical entertainment.

WWE is broadcast in 180 different countries, including the UK, and is watched by 800 million households around the world. In the United States, there are around 11 million fans of WWE and hundreds of thousands of fans based in the UK.  

Using reputable sites like bestcasinosites.net, fans of wrestling can find the UK’s best betting site and wager on the most popular WWE events in the wrestling calendar. 

There are a number of different types of bets that audiences can place. You can bet who will be a first time winner, who will be disqualified, the most eliminations, elimination time, feuds and method of victory to name just a few. 

One reason that betting on wrestling is so popular in the United Kingdom is that there is limited risk involved as bets are often capped. 

Betting on WWE wrestling is a little different from betting on traditional sports. Many bookmakers will put a limit of the amount that their customers can bet, just in case the unlikely event that information is leaked pre-match occurs. However, this limit is high so isn’t a concern for recreational bettors.

Another reason that betting on wrestling has become so popular is that there is guaranteed fun involved. Thrilling outcomes are not a certainty in sports such as football, where nil nil scores can really put a damper on things, whereas in wrestling a action packed event has been planned out for audiences to enjoy.

What kind of events can you place bets on in wrestling?

One of the great things about wrestling is that there is an exciting calendar of events each year that take place. The most high profile are those organised by WWE. Some of the most hotly series of events include:

The Raw wrestling program

Raw, also commonly known as Monday Night Raw, is on the weekly television schedule on the channel USA Network. Live events are also shown on BT sport in the United Kingdom.

Raw hosts live championship events which are popular with bettors. These events include the Raw Women’s Champion, the Raw Tag Team Champion, Raw United States Champion Universal Champion and the Cruiserweight Champion. 

The NXT division

NXT is a supporting brand of WWE. NXT has developed in recent years from a small WWE feeder team style group into a huge global brand in its own right. While it is still considered the minor leagues, audiences can still bet on championship events.

There are four championship events; the United Kingdom Champion, Tag Team Champion, Women’s Champion and the NXT Champion. 

The WWE Smackdown program

Smackdown Live first debuted in 1999 and is a popular flagship program under the WWE brand. In the United Kingdom, the events are broadcast on BT sport and more recently also on Paramount Network.

The four championship events that audiences can bet on are the Women’s Champion, the WWE Champion, the Tag Team Champion and the Intercontinental Champion.

While WWE wrestling may have been born in the United States, there are a number of high-profile professional wrestlers from the United Kingdom.

Female British wrestler Paige made her debut age 13 and went on to become the first Women’s NXT Champion. There is also NXT season one champion Wade Barrett, who has also won the Intercontinental Champion title five times in his career.

Robbie Brookside is another one of the UK’s best known wrestlers. Brookside has won titles in most of the major European champion events. There is also Neville, a wrestler who established himself at a small wrestling organisation in England before going stateside and winning big titles such as NXT Champion and Tag Team Champion.

Professional wrestling has been popular in the United Kingdom for over a century and has gained much more attention in recent years. As audience numbers have risen, so to have the amount of bets being made on this form of sports entertainment. 

We can expect this trend to continue as more WWE events are broadcast to UK viewers and wrestling becomes a bigger feature in the country’s mainstream media.

 

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