Free Download: Worldwide Football League Betting Opportunities

Whilst not a totally exhaustive list, the Excel spreadsheet available below for download shows in tabular form just about every professional and semi-professional football league in the world available for betting (split into the six FIFA confederations).

Any omissions should be considered as simply not worth worrying about as they either receive incomplete/no betting coverage, or are mainly amateur in their composition (or both).

The spreadsheet encapsulates every premier or top division in each FIFA ranked country (plus some non-FIFA countries) and highlights all those available for betting purposes, including all lower level leagues, youth and women’s soccer leagues offered by the bookmakers. We believe that this is the only resource on the Internet offering all of this information in one convenient format.

• The AFC (Asian Football Confederation) includes 38 leagues comprising at least 476 teams and at least 6,037 matches available for betting.
• The CAF (Confederation of African Football) has 10 leagues, at least 165 teams and 2,592 matches;
• CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) includes 17 leagues, at least 201 teams and 2,060 matches;
• CONMEBOL (South American Football Confederation (CONfederación SudaMEricana de FútBOL)) has 26 leagues, at least 412 teams and 4,713 matches;
• OFC (Oceania Football Confederation) has just 1 league, 8 teams and 56 matches available for betting;
• UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) has 187 leagues, at least 2,887 teams and 46,454 matches.

All in all, there are at least 279 leagues available for betting purposes, containing at least 4,149 teams and 61,912 matches. In total, the Soccerwidow spreadsheet provides information on 414 worldwide football leagues.

Despite mid-season breaks in most European leagues (the extents of which are highlighted in the spreadsheet), and breaks between one season finishing and a new season starting, there are more than enough overlapping leagues worldwide to enable 365-day betting, and finding the various solutions to this conundrum was the motivation behind compiling this article and spreadsheet. You will also find in the spreadsheet the actual (or estimated) start and end dates of each league.

At Soccerwidow, we always say that one should approach betting as professionally as a business and the key to success is as much about planning as it is in calculating those ‘value’ bets (see Soccerwidow’s ‘value’ bet article). Find a league available for betting, obtain the statistics to justify value betting decisions, and then choose a bookmaker to place the wagers. There are some great betting opportunities involving some of the more obscure world football leagues and this article provides all that is needed in order to improve one’s grasp of the entire market. It is also disguised as a nice geography and ‘flags of the world’ refresher course!

Download Here!

You can download our Excel spreadsheet which complements, free of charge. However, please kindly return the favour by sharing Soccerwidow via your social network; please Twitter this article, like it on Facebook, or Google+ it, or etc. 🙂

You may choose whether to download versions 477kb .xls (’97-2003 Excel format) or 218kb .xlsx (post 2003 Excel format) (both contain the same information).

During our analysis, it was evident that Bet365 seems to be involved in more leagues than any other bookmaker, whilst other well-known companies such as Tipico, BWin and Ladbrokes also spread their risks over many, many football markets. If Betfair appears comprehensive, then it comes a poor second to some of these traditional bookmakers in terms of market coverage.

It is easy to get carried away watching live streaming football from around the world via the various bookmaker sites (see Soccerwidow’s updated article on this subject: Top Live Video Streaming Betting Sites for Watching Football Matches and imagine that the ‘beautiful game’ is revered in every top-flight league, wherever it may be located. With Soccerwidow’s experience of living for a time in Africa, we can certainly confirm that some of the top-flight African league games in places such as Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania regularly take place on pitches sometimes without a blade of grass on them. We have seen premier league games in these countries played with fishing nets due to a lack of proper goal nets (or the money to afford them), and many games take place with few or no supporters (usually because everyone in the village supports Arsenal or other English Premiership teams!). Please bear in mind the likely circumstances of the event next time you bet on a game taking place outside the confines of rich and comfortable Europe!

Here are some of the more wonderful and humorous facts Soccerwidow uncovered during the compilation of this spreadsheet:

Uzbekistan

New rules for 2011 Uzbek season:

• If any team is found winning with the help of the referee (i.e. the team made some deals with the referee before the game), the team will lose 6 to 9 points.
• If there are any riots during a game, then the team concerned will lose 3 points.
• Since there were too many coaches sacked in the last edition of the Uzbek League, now no club can fire their coach, except with the permission of the Uzbek Football Federation.

(courtesy of www.wikipedia.com)

Yes! Bets are available on Uzbek league matches with Bet365!

Belize

World F.C. is geared up for the start of the 2012 season by announcing its home kick-offs at Broaster Stadium on Saturdays at 7.30pm, if the lights are repaired. If not, Sundays at 4pm…

(courtesy of www.amandala.com.bz)

No markets available yet for matches in the Belize Premier Football League

Puerto Rico

11/07/2011: Puerto Rico Soccer League top flight match between River Plate PR and Caguas Huracán finished 17-0 to the home side. 9 days later, River Plate PR travelled to Caguas Huracán in the reverse fixture and won again, incredibly also by a score line of 17-0!

(courtesy of www.soccerway.com)

Anyone for an over 16.5 goals bet, or an Asian handicap perhaps?!

Sadly, probably for reasons such as this, there is currently no bookmaker that we are aware of offering odds on the Puerto Rico Soccer League…

Guyana

The top marksman award in the 2000-01 Guyana National Football League season was credited to Netrockers FC’s striker, Matthew ‘Assassin’ Pollard, with 16 goals. (Here is a man who definitely loves shooting!)

(courtesy of www.wikipedia.com)

No markets here either.

Sierra Leone

Best name yet for a football team: Kissy All Stars FC (Sierra Leone National Premier League). They probably have very exuberant goal celebrations! (Actually, Kissy is a district to the east of the capital city, Freetown).

Sorry, no markets for Kissy All Stars, despite the adoration of its fans.

The late, great Bill Shankly once said (albeit tongue-in-cheek), “Football isn’t a matter of life or death… it’s much more important than that!” Speaking poignantly, it was a reality-check for Soccerwidow to find when compiling this article various leagues cancelled mid-term, or currently suspended due to civil wars, political disturbances or natural catastrophes. Against this backdrop, football isn’t so important after all.

Whilst Soccerwidow has tried to be as accurate as possible with the compilation of this worldwide soccer league spreadsheet, we cannot guarantee its absolute accuracy. We do however welcome readers from around the world to contact us and advise of necessary amendments or alterations, which we will incorporate into periodical spreadsheet updates.

Have fun; as usual don’t bet more than you can afford to lose and thanks once again for looking…

Soccerwidow’s Bloke.