World Cup fever – have you got it yet?

It’s only days now until the first match of the Brazilian World Cup. How excited are you? The general opinion is that that the Socceroos have lucked out in terms of the Group draw; in fact Group B has been described as the group of death in some sections of the media. The Aussie team is up against Chile, Holland and Spain, all of which have a stronger World Cup history than the Socceroos.

However, that hasn’t stopped more than 40,000 tickets to the World Cup matches being sold to Autralian fans who will be making the trip over to Brazil this month. In fact, more tickets have been sold to Australians than to England fans.

But what if you haven’t put a huge chunk of your savings into a trip to Brazil – how will you approach watching the World Cup? At the moment, it’s not looking that likely that the Australian team will see it through the Group stage.

If you don’t know much about football, then watching a big tournament can be a little daunting if you don’t know what’s going on. However, if you get a grasp of the basics of the World Cup, it’ll make watching the games a lot more interesting, which is handy when that’s what all your mates are doing. There are 32 teams that have made it to the World Cup finals, divided into four groups of eight. During the group stage, each team will play the other three teams in its group. At the time of writing, the odds on Australia winning Group B are around 33/1, whereas the odds on Spain winning it are around 4/6. The winners of each group go through to the elimination stage, along with the runners-up.

We’re then into the knock-out round – where each game could be a team’s last. For people who are only mildly interested in the event, even if Australia hasn’t made it through the group stage, this is where the tournament gets much more exciting. In the second round, each of the Group winners plays a runner-up from another group. Then it’s the quarter-finals, with the top eight teams playing each other. Following the semi-finals, there’s the match between the two losing semi-finalists for third place, followed by the final, which will take place in Rio de Janeiro on 13 July.

One way to really tune your interest in a match is to get a bet on the outcome. With mobile betting apps so easy to download and use today, it’s no surprise that the majority of people now choose to place their bets this way. And bets on the World Cup could be free ones if you sign up at a site like bet365, where there’s a 100% bonus on the first deposit you make as long as it’s $20 or more – up to a value of $200.

Whatever way you look at it, this year’s World Cup will be an exciting tournament, and you never know, a free bet on the Brazilian World Cup could pay for you to go and see the 2018 World Cup in person!