It was a day I desperately wanted my team, Manchester United not to score any more goals. It was then playing Stoke City and I had placed a bet that the scores would be under 2.5. Man U had scored, then Stoke city equalized.
I embarked on the famous ‘kaza haga’ mode with intense concentration. There were guys whose job description that weekend involved watching football, while I toiled to keep up the page views on the company website.
Their noises were kind of a live score for me, depending on intensity and the banter that followed.
At the end of the day, I had my cool two thousand shillings, quite satisfied that my team had not won. From that point onwards, anybody who told me that they knew Man U would not win, I would ask them to show me their winnings. After all, they knew in advance.
The first rule in betting is never to place a bet on the team you support. But that’s not often the case. You sometimes see really nice odds, or you have immense faith in your team winning and you place a bet. Then it disappoints you. Or you win a bet, but your team loses.
Ever since sports betting entered the market, the level of support for football has gone down primarily because fans want money. I mean, what’s the point of supporting a team that’s millions of miles away when you get nothing from it?
If your team loses and you get some money in the process, then to hell with being their fan. The inverse is betting on a team and it loses, and you are quite happy that you lost the money.
On the other hand, there are those who've placed immense faith in their teams, staking their school fees on them. I remember a guy losing Sh10,000 after staking it on Arsenal. Of course, he lost, and we, Man U fans were wondering how someone can be that dimwitted. Pun intended.
After such a heavy loss, how do you wake up the following day and still support Arsenal? Every time they play and win you wonder what sort of demons had possessed them the day you staked an amount close to the value of your life.
Basically, betting has reduced football to the level where people think: what’s in it for me? If it’s the team I support losing and I am gaining then there’s no problem at all. If the other team is losing and I am losing, the better that way.