When you think of sports, what do you think of?
I know that my thoughts turn to baseball, football, hockey, or basketball.
But many sports exist–many that you may not have even heard of.
I know outside the United States, sports like cricket, Gaelic football, and rugby are popular.
And we have sports in the United States that are less popular but have big followings such as soccer, distance running, skiing, and individual martial arts (as opposed to mixed martial arts) like karate, jujitsu, taekwondo, and kung fu.
With all these sports, you’d expect some sort of gambling, as they’re well known and established.
Some sports that exist aren’t what the mainstream would even consider a sport. Some sports are so obscure or have such a small following they fly under the radar to the average person.
But while you may not consider them a sport or may not know what they are, they haven’t flown under the radar of bookmakers.
The best betting sites all over the world offer action on little known or even strange sports.
The main requisite for offering action on these sports is the amount of interest in betting on it.
I won’t pretend to know all the nuances of some of the sports. Some I’ve barely heard of myself, but they all have at least a few sportsbooks that take action on them.
Arm wrestling has long been a subject of gambling. Events like the World Arm Wrestling Championships have been hosted in Las Vegas.
Back in 2017, several NFL active and retired players participated in the Pro Football Arm Wrestling Championships with football stars like Marshawn Lynch and Patrick Chung. Participation in the event prompted NFL commissioner to fine active players who competed.
The event was held at the MGM Grand and was broadcast on CBS television. It generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in wagers.
Arm wrestling is a complex sport to bet on. The sport is dived into 2 categories: stand-up and sit-down.
Some arm wrestlers only compete in stand-up competition and some only in sit-down. Some compete in both. They both require different skill sets because the leverage is different in each category.
Also, most competitions are double elimination tournaments, meaning a competitor can lose once in the competition and still win the overall completion. This makes for the availability of more types of wagers but can make picking a clear overall winner quite hard.
The game that we’ve all spent the $20 on for a cheap nest, 2 racquets, and a rubber nosed shuttlecock, is actually a legitimate sport that oddsmakers take action on.
Badminton can be played in both singles and doubles matches.
Bets for badminton allow you to bet on a winner, total set points, a predicted score, or a handicap bet.
The one drawback of the games is that match-fixing is prevalent in the sport. Recent scandals regarding this fact have unfolded in recent years in China, South Korea, and London.
The game is hard to predict, even if well-known players are involved in a match, so betting is a hard task.
Played mostly in Scandinavia, bandy is quite often referred to as a cross of soccer and hockey. It was a favorite sport of Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.
The game is played in an ice rink and the ice is the size of a standard soccer field. 11 players on each team fight in 2 45 minutes halves over a small plastic ball.
The Swedish bandy league called Elitserien is the most well-known league in the sport. European sportsbooks will usually take bets on this league exclusively for the sport.
In bandy, the most common type of bets is a 1 x 2 bet (which is essentially a win, lose or draw bet), money line betting, and totals betting.
Yes, chess is a sport. It is recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as such and is even required to abide by the IOC’s anti-doping policies.
The modern game of chess is almost 1,000 years old. It evolved from an Indian game called chaturaṅga invented about 280 AD.
As for betting on the game, most sportsbooks only offer to wager on the winner. Most will also offer action on national and world championships, so you can find about 10 of these types of bets a year available at sportsbooks.
They’ve been popular for over 4 decades. Men like Ken Patera, Mark Henry, and Game of Thrones actor Hafþór “the Mountain” Björnsson are among some of the more famous competitors.
A staple in the 70s on ABCs Wide World of Sport, the World’s Strongest Man Competition evolved into a mecca for strong men around the world to test their mettle in strangely concocted feats of strength.
Now broadcast on cable networks like Fox Sports and ESPN, the contest hasn’t lost any steam from its origin.
It also inspired bodybuilder/actor/governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to create his annual Arnold Classic, which is another strongman competition (combine with bodybuilding and other strength sports).
Sportsbooks will take action on winners of individual events and the overall winner in these events. Some will offer prop bets on certain events that may involve time (such as running with a heavyweight) or world records in the events.
No, this isn’t some sort of reference to Beavis and Butthead. Cornhole is a real sport where players take turns throwing bean bags at a raised platform with a hole in the far end. The game gets its name from the original bags which were filled with uncooked corn kernels.
The game is played worldwide but is particularly popular in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia.
Action for major championships can be found at some sportsbooks.
Because this is a team sport, the teams are usually listed as a money line bet and many bettors get quite a kick out of the names that are usually inspired by popular television shows or songs. Some names include:
Among the strangest sports listed in the post is cow chip tossing. For those of you who’ve never been around a farm, cow chips are the dung droppings of cattle.
Contests occur around the country, usually at state fairs. Beaver, Oklahoma is home to the World Cow Chip Tossing Championships and preceded by the Tournament of Chips Parade.
While most cow chip tossing events aren’t going to be on many sportsbooks, the world championships have been previously listed on a sportsbook or 2.
If you want to bet on it, the event happens on Labor Day weekend. So that would be the time to scour the internet to find who’ll take your “crappy” bet.
Curling became an official Olympic sport in 1998. The broadcast of the games became a legend. The Swiss team and the Canadian team battled for the supremacy of who could sweep ice the best.
Since 1998, Team Canada has dominated the gold at the Olympics with 3 wins out of the 6 times the event has appeared at the games. They have also won 2 silver medals in the event. Switzerland has won 1 gold medal and 3 bronze. Norway has won 1 gold, 1 silver, and 1 bronze medal.
The games grew so popular in both Canada and Sweden that sportsbooks started taking action on events.
Today, most sportsbooks will take money line bets on the winning team and over/under bets on totals.
Betting on equestrian events isn’t related to betting on horse racing. Equestrian events are for show horses.
Most of the events involve the horse walking, trotting, and jumping over obstacles. The events aren’t judged on the fastest or highest jumping horse, but the control, athleticism, stamina, speed, and bravery of the horse.
Most United Kingdom sportsbooks will have at least 2 or 3 equestrian events per year to bet on. The world championships and the Olympic events are almost universally carried throughout the country.
Some other events are also carried based on how prestigious they are.
One of the fastest rising sports in the betting world is esports. Never heard of them? Well, esports are competitive team video game competitions. Games like the Counter-Strike series, Overwatch, Street Fighter, and Defense of the Ancients (Dota) are among the more popular games played in these events.
Esports aren’t only in line to become an NCAA sport but are now being discussed by the IOC to become an Olympic sport.
Among the bets that sportsbooks will take on esports are:
As more organizations recognize esports as an actual sport, expect the ability to bet on them to become more mainstream.
Floorball is another sport which is being considered for IOC recognition. Floorball is a version of hockey that’s played on a floor where 2 6 player teams vie to control a plastic ball similar to a whiffle ball.
The game is growing in popularity and has over 4,000 teams worldwide.
Most sportsbooks offer 1 x 2 bets on floorball.
In a harness race, the jockey rides in a 2 wheeled card behind the horse. It’s a modern twist on ancient chariot races.
Betting on a harness race is similar to betting on a horse race. You can place bets like win, place, show, or across the board. You can also bet exactas, quinellas, trifectas, and in some cases a superfecta.
These races are most often held in Europe and therefore, sportsbooks in Europe are the ones that generally take these bets. But you may be able to find some in the US, possibly at a racetrack.
The Irish are proud of many things, and hurling is one of them. The traditional Irish game is touted as one of the most technically challenging games in history. The game is best described as a mix of hockey, rugby, and soccer.
The game doesn’t get its just due as a sport because of the fact that it is mostly played in Ireland and would be the equivalent of a AAA league (in baseball terminology) But the love of the sport in Ireland is enough of a reason for sportsbooks to take notice of, and action on the games.
Jai Alai is a team sport that’s similar to handball. Once one of the more popular games in the world, the games has steadily lost popularity in the past few decades.
But that hasn’t stopped sportsbooks from taking action. It has been a regular on the books since the height of popularity in the 1960s and 70s and shows no sign of being moved off of the oddsmakers plate in the near future.
Powerlifting has been of the periphery of major sports since its organization in the 1970s. The 3 event sport of the squat, deadlift and bench press has seen the likes of Ted Arcidi, “Precious” Paul Ellering, Big E from the WWE’s New Day, and Mark Henry all compete in the sport. Many more athletes use powerlifting as part of their training regimen.
Sportsbooks will occasionally take action on major events. These include the Arnold Classic, The USPF National Championships, the WPF World Championships, the IPF World Championships, and a few others.
The great thing about powerlifting is that you can bet on individual weight classes and an overall winner that’s figured by a formula that takes into account the lifter’s body weight and the weight lifted, finding the pound for pound strongest person in the competition.
You can even place some prop bets on things like world records and an over/under of “bomb outs” which are when a lifter misses all 3 attempts they have on a single lift (i.e. they miss 3 attempts in the squat).
It’s not just for Hogwarts anymore. A “muggle” version of the Harry Potter universe game has been around for over a decade.
The series’ popularity spurred the popularity of the game itself. Now millennials all over the world run up and down fields with brooms between their legs throwing and catching 3 different size balls in order to win the game.
Sportsbooks have taken notice and have offered action on major events like the world championships.
While you may not see action on the reindeer races at your local sportsbooks, the popular Scandinavian sport definitively sees action in the Nordic regions.
Men and women ride the reindeer and race them roughly 700 feet to the finish line. The reindeer reach speeds of up to 40 miles per hour.
An interesting fact is that all jockeys must weigh at least 133 pounds. For females, if they weigh less than that, they’ve to wear special coats that are weighted to meet the requirement.
The childhood game that we used to make a decision has gone Hollywood. Rock, Paper, Scissors, (or RPS as it’s known competitively) is a fast-paced and very serious game for competitors.
The game has evolved into a competitive event that has an international organization and a world championship event.
The game has attracted the attention of sportsbooks and has some famous people who like to place big wagers on the competitions.
It’s said that at Chicago Bulls legend Michael Jordan would regularly bet upwards of $100,000 on RPS games.
When I think of rowing, I think of the movie Oxford Blues starring Rob Lowe.
I consider it a sport competed in the Ivy Leagues in the US and at more affluent schools in the UK.
That’s not to say that it’s a bad sport. It’s been around for hundreds of years, and motions used in the sport are used as an excellent cardiovascular excise with rowing machines.
Because the sport is generally competed in by wealthy and elite students and athletes, it’s a natural fit for sportsbooks to take action on.
While some sportsbooks will take action in the US, the UK and Europe are more prevalent. Oddsmakers offer a variety of bets on rowing including overall winners and futures bets on which school will win the Rowing Championships.
Sumo wrestling has been around for centuries. And while gambling in Japan is mostly illegal, you can be sure that citizens find ways to bet on the events.
Sumo is among the most popular sports in Japan, with tops stars earning as much as $250,000 per year.
Unlike other fighting sports where competitors are divided by weight class, Rikishi (the name for sumo wrestlers) are divided by experience. In order to advance from one division to another, the rikishi must-win matches, usually a minimum of 7. The grand champion is referred to as the Yokozuna.
But sumo wrestling isn’t just made up of Japanese stars anymore. Rikishi now come from all over the world, mostly from the Pacific, but not exclusively.
One of the more popular places to bet on sumo wrestling is in Australia. That may be because a number of Samoan and Pacific Islanders are rikishi and Australia has a big ethnic population of Pacific Islanders.
You can find many Australian sportsbooks, as well as some in other countries that take sumo wrestling bets.
Time to hang 10 and catch a monster wave as you bust out the cash to bet on your favorite surfer.
Many sportsbooks offer the chance to bet on national and international competitions for surfing.
Most sportsbooks will only let you bet on the winner. But some will have other bets such as futures or props like who many wipeouts will happen in an event.
Look around for the best odds on surfing, because they can vary wildly depending on the oddsmaker.
You may ask why I’m listing this again. The fact is that I’m not. I listed powerlifting, which, while it deals with lifting weight, is different from the sport of weightlifting (also known as Olympic lifting).
As I mentioned, powerlifting consists of the squat, bench press, and the deadlift. None of these lifts are overhead (an argument can be made that the bench press is, but that’s really a chest extension).
Weightlifting consists of 2 lifts: the snatch and the clean jerk. Both are overhead presses.
Weightlifting has been a competitive sport for decades and has been available for sportsbook betting for many years. This is especially the case in Europe and Australia, where a majority of the world champions in the last few decades have come from.
Much like powerlifting, you can bet on champions for each weight class and an overall champion (although weightlifting has a different formula for determining the winner than powerlifting does).
While it’s nice to know that betting exists on some of these sports, I probably would stay away from many of them.
For example, I’ve no real interest in cow chip tossing or quidditch. Betting on any sport requires me to research the sport, understand the rules, and know about the players.
Others I would definitely bet on. Especially the strong man competitions, powerlifting, arm wrestling, and weightlifting. I find that these sports often see crossover into other sports and sports entertainment leagues like football and professional wrestling.
I know of many pro wrestlers who actively compete in powerlifting events like Mark Henry and Billy Gunn. And 2017 saw many NFL players compete in an arm wrestling competition.
But those are my preferences. These are presented so you can find your own fun. I’d give you a bit of warning, however. Don’t jump in head first with thousands of dollars into any of these sports until you have researched the game, the players, and how the betting works. It’s okay to drop a few dollars here and there for fun or to even learn, but more than that requires work if you don’t want to lose your bankroll.
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