Handball betting: rules, features, bookmaker’s offers
Handball is a relatively young sport. The first “handball” competitions were held at the XI Olympics in Berlin. Only after that were there world and European competitions. Handball betting develops as the sport grows: every year the sport becomes more popular, and the sportsbooks offer a richer line for handball.
Handball is played indoors on a 131-65 ft court. Every team has a roster of seven players (six field and one goalkeeper). The object of the game is to score as many goals as possible and more importantly, more than your opponent scores.
Handball matches consist of two 30-minute halves and a 15-minute break in-between. The game is, naturally, played with hands and a ball. There are rules of the game that limit a player’s ability to hold the ball for more than three seconds at a time. Understanding all of the rules is a main feature of betting on this sport.
Types of Handball Bets
Handball is a team sport, and betting on it is normal for many sportsbooks, however the sport can be difficult to find on many American sportsbooks.
Betting on the Outcome
In handball, there are three types of bets on the outcome: the victory of the first team (p1), the victory of the second team (p2) and the draw (X). Usually the odds for the draw are very high, because due to the thorough nature of the sport and fast pace of goals the draw is unlikely. In a match between two roughly equal teams (the same quotes on P1 and P2) the odds for a draw are usually 7.00 or higher.
Spread Bets (Handicap)
Often before a match one team is favored more to win than the other. To provide equal odds for both teams, sportsbooks use handicaps. A handicap in handball is a certain number of goals, given to a weaker team before the start of the match. To understand whether a certain bet has won, it is necessary to add the handicap that the sportsbooks previously assigned to the final score.
Over/Under Betting (Totals)
This is an effective and energetic sport, in which a lot of goals are usually scored. Betting on totals implies a certain number of goals to be scored in the match. A handball match lasts 60 minutes (two halves of 30 minutes), and during this time they score an average of 50 goals, almost one goal per minute.
Individual Totals
A slightly more difficult choice is betting on the individual total of a single team. The player needs to predict how many goals one of the two teams will score. This type of bet is influenced by many factors, so it is considered more complex than betting on the total.
Total Number of Goals
In betting on the goals of both teams, the player is asked to predict, whether the teams will score a certain number of goals. For example: each team will score 25 goals. This type of bet is similar to betting on the total.
Exact Score
A difficult type of handball betting is the bet on the victory of one of the teams with an exact goal difference. Usually it is offered with variants by groups of three goals (victory with a difference of 1-3 goals, a difference of 4-6 goals, etc.).
Combined bets
Also, in handball you can play a variety of combined bets. For example, you can play a combination of both the victory of one of the teams and the total of the victory (the first team’s victory is more than 51.5 goals).
How to Bet on Handball
Before you start betting on handball, carefully examine handball rules, sportsbook’s rules when accepting bets on this sport, regulations of handball tournaments, favorites, underdogs and outsiders. This is a standard set of things that should be understood when betting on any team sport, including handball.
Handball is a simple sport on the outside, but it has a lot of different nuances. Not all of the intricacies of the game will be understood at once. As in any other case, the success of betting on handball comes with a player’s experience. Therefore, make your first bets on the sport on the bookmaker’s demo account or in small sums, which will not totally discourage you if you end up losing your wager.
Analysis and Statistics of Handball Bets
Even just 20 years ago, it was difficult for handball fans to find quality statistics from the games. The situation with analytics was even worse as there were very few real handball specialists. However, everything has changed with the development in the era of open information. Now thanks to the internet you can find almost any statistic.
Along with the current flow of quality information there was also a stream of pseudo-analytical articles about the sport. Many of them describe some strategies of betting on handball, however it often happens that the “analysists” do not even know all the rules of the game, yet nevertheless giver their advice.
It should be understood, for example, the strategy of placing live bets on handball is not much different from pre-match bets: it is also necessary to know the rules of the game, regulations of handball tournaments, favorites and outsiders. You also need the ability to act quickly, so that you can decide the outcome faster. Statistics do not guarantee winning handball bets (or any other sport) but it will save you from making easily avoidable failed bets.
Which American Sportsbooks have Handball Bets?
Modern sportsbooks try to offer players a wide of line as possible for making bets. Handball is a popular sport and betting on it has also recently been popular. Most often sportsbook’s lines are national championships of countries as well as international tournaments at club level and at national team level.
