After the Australian authorities gave them permission to go beyond their basic markets, online bookmakers have come up with numerous rugby league betting types which most are common for NRL as well as State of Origin matches.
A simple table is given below highlighting some of the best online bookmakers that offer rugby league markets.
Football is one of Australia’s most popular sports, with the 13-player game being extremely popular in the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales and Queensland and making slow progress in those traditional heartlands of Aussie rules football.
Australia’s rugby league is dominated by two competitions: the National Rugby League that involves 16 clubs including one in New Zealand competing for premiership glory and State of Origin that is a three-game series between players who are from New South Wales and Queensland.
The attendances at NRL matches are not even close to being as high as those of AFL games, however in the contest between these two sports on TV, NRL has always been a winner and one of the main reasons for that is because Australia’s east coast annually grinds to a halt over three separate Wednesday evenings in the middle of winter due to the State of Origin series.
Now that the Australian market has been opened up to competition, numerous online bookmakers are targeting NRL and State of Origin betting categories, with each match having more than 50 markets.
The Australian lexicon does not include either money-line betting or straight-up betting, although Australian punters and bookmakers refer to the market in which there are odds about both teams winning the game as head-to-head betting.
Additionally, Australian bettors use decimal odds which leads them to a common mistake of placing the sign of the Australian dollar before them. For instance, such can be head-to-head betting in an NRL game between two joint ventures in the competition:
Line betting is the most popular type of rugby league match betting. Here, handicapping games by awarding a head start to the head-to-head underdog is what bookmakers do mostly and this is line betting.
For instance, the Tigers may be given a three-and-a-half-point advantage over the Dragons as a head start for punters to bet on them with $1.92 odds:
It can have some definitions. Nevertheless, unlike the point spread and line stakes, bookmakers are not obliged to settle on winners due to divergence of handicaps.
If, for instance, the Tigers won example match by four points, then those punters who had placed bets on Tigers either in head to head betting or line betting (-3.5) will have something to smile about while for the dragons fans and the tigers’ fans who had placed their bets on line betting will miss out.
Besides head-to-head betting, line betting and points betting; rugby league bookmakers also offer margin betting on all NRL and State of Origin matches with most margins falling within 1-12 points and 13+ points per side.
When it comes to rugby league, fans usually place wagers on various events other than the final outcome of matches; some of the common exotics are 40/20 kicks, first scoring play and first try scorer.
Scoring in rugby league matches is done by a try (4 points), a conversion (2 points), penalty goal (2 points) and field goal (1 point). First, conversions cannot be scored before a try, thus there are three possible ways for each team to be the first scoring team. Additionally, it is rare to see either penalty goals or field goals used as tiebreakers.
A typical first scoring play market may be:
Since everyone who plays in a rugby league team has an excellent opportunity to score, unlike football or union, soccer and Australian rules, it is quite difficult to predict the first person who will score. However, this never prevents bettors from flooding bookmakers with odds of about $10 each way.
In rugby league, a 40/20 kick is an aspect that compensates sides for precise and long kicks within the game. Attempting 40/20 kicks carries some risks but its rewards are huge since it helps in field position as well as ball retention. Punters can place bets on whether there will be any successful 40/20 kick in NRL and state of origin games.
Premiership Betting
At the beginning of the season, NRL Premiership glory is what sixteen teams are dreaming about. Each team has 24 matches – a draw that isn’t as bad as that of AFL – and eight of them qualify for the NRL finals.
The NRL Finals system is complicated, but it is simple to understand that the top four clubs have the most chances of making it to the NRL Grand Final that takes place at ANZ Stadium and was known as Stadium Australia then.
Medals Betting
The Dally M Award is given to the fairest and best player in the NRL competition. Although it does not have nearly as high a profile as the Brownlow Medal of AFL, it still creates some gambling activity especially during a few days before it is announced on television.
Some rugby league positions are more important than others. The one, six, seven and nine, which is the fullback, five-eighth, halfback and hooker respectively have the highest importance in that they touch the ball so often as compared to other roles. When a team does not have one or more of these key players it is hard for them to win games against their opponents. Their disadvantage is too much.
Rugby league is a cruel game and its players need as much time for recovery as possible. In case one team has more than two days of rest that the other, support the side with more days to give its limbs rest.
It can be argued that the current squad is the best in the history of this annual clash between Queensland and New South Wales, with Maroons taking it seven straight.
For sure there are a few sports that beat watching rugby league on television and putting a bet only enhances the thrill. That is why you should sign up with one of our best placed online Rugby League betting sites to place a bet for your favorite team.
