WC hockey | Bettors do not believe the hockey players against Finland. You can also bet on a hole in the ice and Trump in the audience

Someone bets just to “enjoy” watching the match, others are eager to sell their knowledge. However, with the start of the hockey championship, the betting “fever” starts again, after all, for example, at last year’s world hockey championship, Tipsport recorded a total of one billion crowns.

If it is an evening match with Finland, then the bookmakers across the offices see the duel evenly, but the punters do not. At Fortuna, 69 percent of them bet on the Finns and only 22 percent on the Czech team. It is similar with Tipsport – two-thirds predict a win for the Finns, only 29 percent believe the Czechs, the rest predict a draw. At Chance, the gap is even wider with 80 percent betting on the Finns.

“The home environment will be a huge advantage, but we don’t have Canadian confidence or a gold rate. I would say that it is also a certain tension in Czech hockey. A lot of opinion camps, and therefore also clashes between the top players of domestic hockey, does not add to the belief in success. But sometimes such things are an impulse for the team to shut down internally and show that everything around is just pub talk,” says Tipsport’s hockey bookmaker Miroslav Hora. “We are all still hoping for the arrival of David Pastrňák. We would like to see him in the Stanley Cup finals, as well as in the World Cup finals. If he was involved, our stock would shoot high.”

By the way, with Fortuna, you can bet at odds of 3:1 that Pastrňák will play in at least one World Cup match in Prague.

If it is a matter of overall triumph, then at Fortuna there are a trio of favorites – Canada (odds 4.0), Sweden (4.1), the USA (4.2), followed by Finland (8.4) and the Czech Republic (8.5) . They have almost identical odds and rankings at Tipsport and Chanc. The outsiders are the British (1250) and the Poles (1666). Canadians also lead the bettors in terms of recruitment, followed by Swedes and Czechs.

WC in hockey 2024

“Let’s leave the nomination itself aside, the hares are counted only after the hunt, in any case, the Czechs have to add a lot to be competitive and think about fighting for medals. Defending Canada will come very pumped up, maybe I like America even more and Sweden will also be hungry for success. According to the paper assumptions, it is these teams that will divide the medals, if someone else took the gold, it would be a big surprise,” explains Roman Kovařík, an expert at Fortuna betting office.

So far, the highest solo bet at Tipsport is a ticket for 250 thousand crowns that the Czechs will not win the basic group (odds 1.18). In Chanci, one bettor gave 50,000 that the Czechs will score the first goal in Saturday’s duel against Norway (1.27).

But traditionally, there are also betting “pikošky”, where you can have a lot of music for little money. For example, Fortuna has odds of 333:1 that Donald Trump will arrive in the Czech Republic and support the Americans. That at least one match will be interrupted due to a hole in the ice and moved to the next day is 111:1, and that Radim Rulík will be replaced by Vladimír Růžička during the tournament is 555:1.

But what could possibly be tempting about these crazy bets? The odds are 4.6:1 that the attendance record will not be broken.