Australian bookmaker Sportsbet offered odds of 2.90 for Australia to win the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup against an undefeated Indian team, which was priced at 1.40. However, the host nation failed to use the momentum it gained during the early stages of the tournament and was beaten by six wickets by a talented Australian team, much to the delight of heaps of Aussie bettors who backed their team to win a sixth ICC World Cup title.
Australian Victory Explains Higher India Odds
130,000 cricket fans attended the game in the Ahmedabad stadium, and 300 million watched the World Cup finals on TV, breaking the record for the most-watched event in Indian TV history, according to Disney.
It is also estimated that approximately 59 million concurrent viewers watched the game via the Disney Hotstar streaming app at one point in the game. However, as it was becoming apparent that the Indians were going to lose the game, those viewership figures started to drop.
Anish Badshah, a US-based specialist in betting market analysis and BETTR Edge founder, said ahead of the game that despite the Indians being favourites during the entire tournament, their odds going into the game against Australia were higher. Badshah added that those Indian odds were rising for a reason: the match was “between two of the best teams” in the tournament.
1.25 Million Fans Attended ICC World Cup Games
What made the defeat even harder to take for the Indians was that they also seemed to fail to properly organize the tournament, especially in light of their desire to host the Olympics in 2036. With cricket becoming an Olympic sport in 2028, failing in their bid will hurt even more.
The host nation received numerous criticisms for how it handled scheduling and ticketing, while the off-the-charts air pollution that most big Indian cities have to deal with didn’t help either, with cricketers resorting to inhalers to make it through training sessions.
None of that stopped cricket fans in India from attending ICC World Cup matches, though. The International Cricket Council reported that a record 1.25 million fans went to Indian stadiums to watch World Cup cricket matches despite organization and pollution problems.
