Currie Cup offers betting opportunities

Sports betting is a global business – and one of the things veteran punters often talk about is the “good old days” when bookies priced up individually and the shrewd punter could claim prices before they moved.

Things have changed though and these days the odds on major sporting events are churned out offshore by mathematical geniuses (or at least computer systems written by said geniuses). They are dispersed to the market through feeds, meaning there is usually little difference between bookmakers and major price shifts are rare.

Sure you may get Man United shortening from 1/1 to 9/10 on the back of some team news but there is seldom something where a punter needs to reload his account and fire.

Here, though, is the beauty of the Currie Cup. Some of the games are televised overseas but generally speaking the demand for odds outside South Africa is low. With no one to follow it is an option that the local market simply waits for the overseas boys to price up. Thankfully we have a couple of innovative sports books – one of which is Betxchange.

They were first out with their Currie Cup handicaps this week and this was highlighted late on Monday night in the Goodforthegame forum. On Tuesday morning I checked my phone and agreed with the early sentiment that the Lions -28.5 v Boland and WP -15.5 v Kings were cracking bets.

As it happened, my Betxchange account needed funding – something easily done through credit card and the sun had just started rising when I found myself staring at a healthy balance ready for investing.

I had expected the handicaps of those two games to be a lot bigger and by the time this article is published I would hope that the lines have shifted in my favour.

There is no guarantee that the bets will arrive but it always feels good to take a price or handicap line that later shifts. In a strange way that feels like a win, which, as my wife reminds me more often than I would like, it certainly isn’t.

Here’s to hoping the Lions and WP win well and that the early bird gets the worm.

Brent Graham is a sports betting blogger at

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