In many locations around the world, football-related activities are one of the most popular ways to spend some time. Football itself is a huge global industry with many sub-elements that play a role in its ongoing growth and development.
Sports betting is a substantial and important part of this business, as well as being an enjoyable experience in itself. For a while now, Nigeria has created its own promising representative in that department.
Indeed, football and betting go well together and complement each other – sort of like peanut butter and jelly – which is why they can benefit each other also from the commercial point of view. Apart from supporting their favourite teams, true sports enthusiasts watch other games, too.
Certainly, some of them do like to make a wager on the side to make things more interesting. Especially if they have good knowledge about the discipline, which they can then use to make their educated guesses better.
On the other hand, when somebody already is a talented gambler it isn’t the biggest surprise when he increases his interest in various matches. For that reason, there is no wonder that the greatest and most prestigious events attract a lot of attention from such individuals, as well as recreational players who just want to have a little taste of the thrill.
This was undoubtedly the case when it came to the FIFA World Cup in Russia, which concluded this July. It wasn’t a very merciful tournament for the African teams, as none of them qualified for the knock-out stages, including our Super Eagles (we came pretty close, though). However, for the real money wagering providers, it has been a tremendous time.
A single match of the championships accumulated an average of 2.1 billion euros in the amount of money in bets. The final game resulted in 7.2 billion spent. It all adds up to an enormous 136 billion in total.
There are plenty of quality betting providers with a large number of dedicated customers. Nigeria’s first sport wagering online portal is called NairaBET. It started operating in 2009 and it has significantly developed since, establishing a company headquarters in Lagos as well as numerous outlets across the country.
The main company’s main area of expertise is, naturally, sports betting, but they are also expanding into iGaming by providing casino-like entertainment and poker. While there may very well be plenty of top quality websites out there in other areas of the world designed for such activities, the Nigerian provider has introduced a possibility to create an online poker room in which to play video or sports poker.
The introduction of NairaBET was made possible by the entrepreneur Otunba Akin Alabi, who got the idea from exploring the United Kingdom’s bookmaking industry. As a businessman, he built his enterprsies from scratch and he supports and encourages the youth of Nigeria to do so as well. Alabi is renowned philanthropist, running his own non-profit NGO – the Akin Alabi Foundation.
With a focus on improving the quality of life of average Nigerian citizens, its good to know that some of the profits generated from te big businesses of football and sports betting go to the ones that need it most.
