Although Germany won this year’s FIFA World Cup, beating Argentina 1-0 in extra time, locals who bet on that victory in the nation’s sports lotteries ended up walking away with nothing, because the victory came after regular time.
The championship match between Germany and Argentina was broadcast at 3am local time yesterday. Statistics from the Taiwan Sports Lotteries showed that, as of Saturday last week, about 70 percent of participants chose Germany to win in a shutout match and just 20 percent bet on Argentina.
Meanwhile, 10 percent bet that the two teams would draw.
Because of the overwhelming support for Germany, the lottery closed the betting session for about 40 minutes on Sunday night to readjust the odds.
It said it did so as risk management to limit its losses.
Apparently seeing that the odds for a draw had been raised from 3.2 to 3.4 after the firm reopened betting, some gamblers placed their stakes on a drawn match instead.
The firm said one spent NT$70,000 (US$2340) betting on a draw and collected NT$238,000.
The Taiwan Sports Lottery said it has pulled in NT$2.4 billion in bets through 64 World Cup games in the past month, with about 77 percent of the betting fund given out as prizes. The company said it has gained profits after deducting marketing costs as well as the portion of the fund designated for the Sports Development Fund and social welfare programs.
Based on the gaming rules of the sport lotteries, the valid betting time of a soccer game generally refers to the regular time of 90 minutes as well as the additional time caused by players’ injuries or other factors. It does not include the extra time or time for penalty shootouts or rematches.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching