Yes, even though the matches are shown at midnight to the wee hours of the morning here in our part of the world, the Euro 2008 fever is burning high too! According to David Farrelly of www.euro2008.UEFA.com, about 13% of their users come from Asia.
Considering that football (or soccer to some of you) is not a popular choice of sport among Asians, I find this fascination to the Euro 2008 quite intriguing. Until a cab driver enlightened me: it’s not so much as the sport itself (though you do find real fans here, too), but as this Carlsberg report says, it’s soccer being an object of betting.
“In several Asian countries, people are crazy about betting. Betting is a very large industry and betting on football results has become very popular”, says Berky Y.W. Kong, Carlsberg’s head of communications in Asia.
In Hong Kong and Macau, for instance, betting on football results was only made legal a few years ago. But now, only horse races are a bigger betting object than European football teams.
Ahhh, makes sense, doesn’t it?
Tags: Asia, asia travel blog, asia-travel, betting, euro 2008, football, football betting, soccer, soccer betting, sports betting, uefa, uefa2008Share This
