FA Cup Betting Odds

The world famous Football Association Challenge Cup tournament is over 130 years old and each year grabs the imagination of all football loving fans and players, with the smaller clubs dreaming of big match days and shocks over the more fashionable bigger clubs.
What makes the FA Cup so unique is that any team can compete in it, and therefore go on to win it.
Hundreds of teams each year begin their quest for glory in August with the final being in May the following year. The competition has a knock-out format where no teams are seeded. After each round of matches the teams are drawn out of a hat by the Football League, where any two teams can be picked out.
First played in the 1871/72 season which saw only 15 teams competing, it was won by Wanderers a team formed of university and ex-public school boy players.They won the first ever final 1-0 against Royal Engineers in front of 2,000 spectators at the Kennington Oval.
In its history there have been four different trophies, with 1992 the most recent year it changed. The most successful side over the years has been Manchester United winning the cup 11 times, followed by Arsenal on 10 and Spurs with eight wins.
Wembley became the home of the FA Cup in 1923 after the stadium was finished at a cost of 750,000. That year 200,000 fans rammed in to see Bolton beat West Ham 2-0.It has been played there every year up until 2001 where the final has been staged at the Millennium Stadium due to a new Wembley being built. It will return to the home of football in the 2006/07 when the planned construction for the new stadium will be completed.
Although a high number of teams set out with dreams of Wembley glory, in reality it is the big clubs that tend to go on and win it. In the last twenty years the cup has been won by Chelsea, Man Utd, Liverpool or Arsenal on 18 of those 20 occasions.
In recent times the betting industry has seen dramatic growth in football betting, with FA Cup weekends and Finals providing key turnover days in the bookmaker's calendar. The shock element of the cup along with unevenly matched teams playing one another in the earlier rounds have over the years seen some memorable shocks, providing excellent betting value for the football punter.

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