Rugby Union Betting

Rugby Union is now truly an all year round Sport and primarily the game is divided into the Northern Hemisphere, which consists of England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Italy and France who compete annually in the Six Nations, and Southern Hemisphere teams who are Austrailia, New Zealand and South Africa.

Punters have never had so many options to bet on Rugby. Domestically you have The Aviva Premiership (England), The RaboDirect PRO12 (Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Wales) and Top 14 (France) the very best teams from these leagues also compete in The Heineken Cup which is similar to the Champions League in football. In the Southern Hemisphere the elite competition is Super 15.

There tends to be a lot of short price favourites in Rugby Union and so many people will look to other types of bets other than the outright market so we'll have a look at some of the other types of markets of offer.

Rugby Union Handicap Betting

This is an increasingly popular market beacuse as I stated earlier many teams will start at long odds on.

For example if Wales were playing Italy and Wales were best priced at 1/6 many prospective punters would be put off by that price but a handicap market could read something like this:

Wales - 12pts (10/11) Italy +12 (10/11)

Now a bet at 10/11 would be far more tempting to a prospective backer because obviously of the larger price.

So should the above game end in a scoreline of Wales 30 Italy 15 and you backed Wales then your bet would win as the deficit is 15pts but on the handicap Wales were -12pts.

Rugby Union Winning Margin

Another popular bet is the winning margin. Let's say England were playing France but you expected England to triumph in a very tight match then you could be tempted to back them on the winning margin market of 1- 5 at say odds of (9/2) This means that England would need to win by a margin of 1-5 points for the bet to win.