The Champions League is the most prestigious international club tournament in the world, even though there is a Club World Cup. And although it includes teams that have won it more than once, it is not easy to predict the winner of the Champions League every year. No wonder: 32 teams participate in the group stage of the tournament, 16 of which go to the playoffs and play for elimination.
Bookmakers offer bets on the results of the group stage, as well as on the results of the playoffs and the entire tournament, even before the start of a particular stage. Moreover, even before the start of the tournament itself, you can bet on who will win it, for example, at the Parimach bookmaker or anywhere else in Uzbekistan.
To date, the group stage of the Champions League of the 2022-23 season is still ongoing, so it will not be possible to determine even one participant in the playoffs. However, it is possible to make predictions about who has the highest probability of advancing to the final stage of the tournament. And not only.
Bookmakers are well aware that the more options players have for betting, the more likely they are to place bets. After all, if a player argues with friends about who from the conditional group A will reach the playoffs, he can apply the conclusions from the dispute in bets: spend money on the fact that such and such a team will reach the playoffs.
So it’s not at all surprising that bookmakers, firstly, have long-term bets on tournaments that are offered even before they start, because people think not only about how the match will end, but also about who will win in the end cup. Secondly, it is not surprising that there are bets on individual stages of tournaments, since in addition to the final in the same Champions League, there are enough stages in which more than one match is played and which can also be bet on.
Today it is not a problem to find a bookmaker where you can bet on the results of each stage of the Champions League. If we talk specifically about the group stage, then usually bookmakers offer a line of bets on it either in the form of separate pages for some outcome (for example, betting on the winner of the group) with the markets of each group, or in the form of separate pages for each group with markets of different outcomes (for example, for bets on the winner of the group, on the third place, and so on).
But after such a bookmaker with bets on the group stage of the Champions League 2022-23 is found, there is another problem: how to understand who will make it to the playoffs? Of course, in certain groups there were initially favorites or they were determined during the tournament after half of the rounds, but in others everything is not so clear.
In general, if you don’t really follow football, but want to earn extra money on bets, various mathematical models like FiveThirtyEight, which considers the probability of all Champions League participants to reach one stage or another of the tournament, can help you a lot.
Unfortunately, specifically in this model there is no way to group teams into groups or find out the chances of reaching the playoffs, regardless of the place in the standings, but it makes it clear who you should bet on at the current and subsequent stages – but we must not forget that the results of the Champions League are unpredictable, especially in the play-offs with two matches per pair.
Of course, before betting, you still need to pay attention to the standings, although in most cases this simply gives an understanding of who is closest to leaving the group. The odds for the exit of those who take first place are often very low.
But in general, it’s better to watch football – the closer the playoffs, the more interesting.
