Surfing Betting Guide – A Detailed Description

In this surfing betting guide, we break down the two main competitions of the sport. In recent years, surfing has moved on from being a pastime and hobby into a competitive sport with professional athletes. Continue reading to learn more about the sport of surfing.

Surfing Betting Guide: An Introduction

There are two main types of surfing competitions. One of them is the World Longboard Surfing Championship and the other is the World Surfing Games. In this article, we break down both of these competitions.

According to online sportsbook news in Australia, the sport has developed into a globally watched and recognized sport. In this surfing betting guide, we go into the details of the ISA and how to bet on the sport.

International Surfing Association

The International Surfing Association, or ISA, is the international governing body of surfing and is the primary organiser of all premier surfing events. The association was founded in 1964 and has held professional surfing competitions ever since. The ISA was created with the intention to create structured tournaments for surfers which would bring together surfers from across the world in competition and to help increase the popularity of the sport.

The ISA organises world surfing events such as the ISA World Surfing Games, Junior Surfing Championship, SUP and Paddleboard Championship, Adaptive Surfing Championship, Longboarding Championship amongst many more. They also secured competitions in the Olympics, which could provide opportunities for surfers to compete with even larger media coverage.

 ISA World Longboard Surfing Championship

Longboard surfing is a popular form of surfing where athletes use longer boards called longboards that are far heavier and difficult to use but they allow surfers to ride waves for longer periods of time and do different kinds of manoeuvres.

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Whilst they are recommended for beginners due to their stability, mastering longboards is especially difficult and they can be more dangerous than normal surfboards when riding on larger waves. The extra length and foam means that these surfing events will be slower than short boards, with less dynamic turns and tricks, but they will have longer rides and surfers will need to demonstrate a lot of stamina and patience to perform well.

The ISA World Longboard Surfing Championship brings out the very best in surfers as they hit the waves. The contestants must ride boards that are at least 9 feet in length and will compete against each other in teams for the title. The teams will consist of the best longboard surfers in each nation, consisting of three men and three women.

The men and women will compete in two separate competitions, but their overall points will be added together to create the points of each of the nations. At the end of the ISA World Longboard Surfing Championship, there will be gold, silver and bronze medals given to the top three men longboard surfers, the top three women longboard surfers, and there will be gold, silver and bronze medals for the competition as a whole, given to the top three nations.

ISA World Longboard Surfing Championship Bets

Now that you are aware of the ISA World Longboard Surfing Championship, it is time to search through the most popular betting markets. Those include:

Winning Nation

Punters can bet on which of the competing nations will win the Longboard Surfing Championships. There will be odds offered on all of the nations in the competition, and the strongest teams will have the shortest odds.

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It is important to remember that the nation that wins will have the most points accumulated between the men’s and women’s teams, so when picking a nation to bet on then punters should keep both teams in mind.

Men’s Longboard Surfing Winner

There may be bets offered on which of the top men surfers will win the gold medal. This bet is on individual surfers to win, which will mean that the odds on these bets will be far longer than those on which nation to win as there are far more possible outcomes.

Women’s Longboard Surfing Winner

Just as punters can pick which male surfer they want to back to win, there will be bets for the individual female surfers.

Reaching the Final Round

There may be additional bets where punters can bet on either nations or surfers to reach the final rounds. Punters can choose whether they want to place bets on a single nation or surfer to reach the finals, or they can bet on two nations, or up to four individual men or women surfers, to reach the finals. Picking multiple surfers or two nations will be far riskier to bet on, but a correct prediction can result in far larger returns.

Highest Wave

There may be bets offered on which surfer will score the highest on a single wave. Surfers can be given a maximum of 10 points on a single wave and there are a lot of aspects of their ride that the judges take into account when scoring, and whilst the top surfers are strong favourites, anything can happen in surfing.

Highest Scoring Heat

This is a bet where punters can pick which of the nations in the competition will have the highest scoring heat. The points for each will be added from the men’s and women’s heats in a single round.

Head to Head

This is quite a unique bet, as it allows punters to bet on the winner between two surfers. There may be numerous bets to pick from in both the men’s and women’s competitions, such as Kai Sallas (HAW) vs Kevin Skvarna (US), Ben Skinner (EN) vs Kai Sallas, Benoit Clemente (PE) vs Tony Silvagni (US), for the men's, and picks such as Tory Gilkerson (US) vs Chloe Calmon (BR), Maria Fernanda Reyes (PE) vs Emily Lethbridge (AUS), for the women's. There may also be bets between surfers from the same nation, such as Kevin Skvarna vs Tony Silvagni.

Live Bets

Live bets will be made available once the surfing has begun, and these will comprise most of the standard bets mentioned above, only they will be offered with odds that will update in real time.

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Live bets are quite popular amongst surfing punters as they will be able to see the weather conditions and watch to see what kind of waves there are and how the surfers are handling them, before putting their money on any of the bets.

ISA World Surfing Games

The ISA World Surfing Games is organised by the International Surfing Association and features a series of tournaments that are contested by the best surfers from around the world. The competition is held every two years and each edition is hosted by a different country. The first World Surfing Games were held in Australia in 1964, and originally they were called the ISF World Surfing Championships. The surfers have a lot to compete for, as they enter the competitions with their national teams and can win berths to the Olympic Games.

There are two tournaments, the Open Men's Championship and the Open Women's Championship, which both contribute to the Overall World Team Championship results, and the winning team will be awarded gold medals, the second place silver, the third placed bronze and the fourth place copper.

Each national team consists of three men and three women, who compete for individual medals and if they win, they are awarded the Fernando Aguerre World Team Trophy, which is named after the ISA President.

The competitions are held in different phases: there are 7 main rounds and one Final. In each round, the surgers are pooled into heats of two to four surfers, who will have between 20 and 30 minutes, depending on the stage of the competition, where they have to try to catch the best waves they can. Each wave caught is then scored by a panel of judges who can afford surfers up to 20 points for a wave. The best two waves ridden by the surfers are counted into the final score of each heat, meaning a surfer can achieve a maximum score of 20/20 for a single heat.

Juding the Waves

The waves are judged with the following criteria: the surfer's commitment to the wave and the level of difficulty it takes to ride the wave, how creatively a surfer takes on a wave, how many dynamic manoeuvres a surfer does on a wave, how varied these manoeuvres are, and the speed, power and degree of fluency a rider shows on a wave. This means that surfers will be careful when choosing which wave to ride, because any failure can result in low points or even injury in the worst case.

In the heats, the surfers all make their attempts at the same time, so if one surfer cuts into the inside of another surfer after a wave, they will be given a penalty where half their points on their second best wave will be taken away. This means that surfers must be respectful of each other in the water and must try to distance themselves so that all contestants have a fair chance and there is no interference.

ISA World Surfing Games Bets

Onto the ISA World Surfing Games, the betting markets for the competition include:

Outright Winner

These are bets that relate to the ISA World Surfing Games as a whole. Punters will be able to place bets on who will win the competition outright.

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There will be bets for which surfer will win the men’s gold medal, which surfer will win the women’s gold medal, and which team will win the competition outright. These bets will be available both before the ISA World Surfing Games start and during the competition.

Heat Winner

There may be bets for individual heats. These will offer punters the chance to bet on individual surfers to win in heats. Depending on whether a heat has two, three or four places, the odds of betting on individual surfers can vary, though the favourite to win in a heat will have the shortest odds.

Nations To Reach the Final Round

Punters may also find bets on nations to reach the final round. This may come in the form of a bet on a single nation to make the finals, or it may be a bet on multiple nations to reach the finals. The odds on the teams that are considered to be the favourites in this category will be long, as there are many different possible outcomes.

Head to Head

Head to head bets may be easier to predict, as they only require bettors to predict which contestant will score higher between two individuals or teams. The top surfers from the different teams will be matched against each other, there may be head to head bets such as Joan Duru (FR) vs Kanoa Igarashi (JPN), or Italo Ferreira (BR) vs Joan Duru (FR), or Kolohe Andino (US) vs Italo Ferreira (BR), and many more combinations, depending on who enters the competition.

There may also be head to head bets between team members, such as Italo Ferreira BR) vs Gabriel Medina (BR), or Joan Duru (FR) vs Jeremy Flores (FR), or Kanoa Igarashi (JPN) vs Hiroto Ohhara), which may be a bit trickier to place, as the surfers do usually aim to win points together to help their nation qualify for the Olympic Games.

Live Bets

There may also be live betting available, where punters can find most of the bets listed above. Live betting on surfing is not only a lot of fun but it can be extremely useful as a lot may depend on wind, the waves, and many other factors. Bettors may choose to wait for the games to begin before they place their bets solely for this reason.

The bets will be offered with live odds, meaning that if the weather conditions favour certain surfers or other surfers are having difficulty in the initial heats, their betting odds will change.

The Bottom Line

Thus, in conclusion to our surfing betting guide, you are now aware of the various betting markets for surfing and the two top competitions to bet on. Online sportsbook sites in Australia have a host of betting markets for the sport and attract thousands of punters to bet on surfers to perform the very best.

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