Canada will hold off any soccer celebrations at least for a few more days.
Costa Rica beat the Canadian men’s national team 1-0 in CONCACAF action Thursday night in San Jose, Costa Rica. It was the first loss for Canada (7-1-4) in the World Cup qualifying campaign.
Canada had to play a man down for almost two-thirds of the match. Not that we’re looking to make excuses.
So now we’re looking at this Sunday’s match against Jamaica, at a sold-out BMO Field in Toronto, as Canada's next opportunity to seal a spot at the World Cup in Qatar in November. Canada stills sit atop the final round-robin standings with a three-point lead over Mexico and the U.S.
PROLINE+ is currently the only option to place legal sports wagers in Ontario. That will change on April 4 when the competitive and regulated market launches.
Canadian National Team Popular
The Ontario sports betting interest in the team is only going to keep rising. The OLG reported Friday morning that Thursday night’s game closed as the third most-popular national team match since PROLINE+ launched last August. Sales for the match climbed strongly right up until kickoff.
“As the majority of wagers were on Canada to win, the outcome was unfortunately in OLG’s favor this time around, unlike several of the previous matches which had gone in the players’ favor,” a spokesperson told OntarioBets.com.
Odds for the game opened at 2.40 to Canada and dropped to 2.25 since nearly 75% of all wagers and 85% of all singles were on Canada to win.
This Sunday and next Wednesday’s match versus Panama will no doubt do better, as buzz around what would be the men’s soccer team’s first World Cup berth since 1986 heats up. Canada only needs a tie in either of those games to clinch a spot in the World Cup as one of the top three temas in CONCACAF.
Soccer Betting Keeps Growing
The Canadian men's national team games versus the U.S. and El Salvador in September were extremely popular with PROLINE+ players, both ranking in the Top 10 soccer events since launch (No. 6 and No. 7 all-time, respectively).
Also, no real surprise across the rest of the soccer world, from a sports betting perspective, according to OLG: The English Premier League, Italian Serie A and Spain Primera Division are Top 3 in betting popularity.
Top soccer events all-time are Euro matches: Tottenham vs. Everton, Real Madrid vs. Barcelona, Man City vs. Man U, Inter vs. Liverpool and Man U vs. Atletico Madrid, in that order.
