India’s has only one time zone; India Standard Time. It’s 5hr30mins ahead of GMT and the country does not use Daylight Savings Time. So in the northern hemisphere summer, the time difference between Mumbai and London is reduced to only 4hrs30mins.
The timing of global sporting events has no impact on what volume is available on Skin accounts. Skins offer pre-set leverage (or “gearing”) based on the underlying liquidity available on the Betfair market. However, with phone betting in India, offered through Cricket88’s chat service, the timing of a sporting event can have a big impact on the level of bet size offered.
The time differences have no major bearing on the liquidity available for top-level cricket matches for phone bets. If there is an important match featuring India, whether at home or on tour in New Zealand or the West Indies, and regardless of the format, bet sizes are consistently enormous. For most other ‘big’ matches, played in the early hours of the morning in India, at least one big bookmaker in our network will still be sitting to offer bets (‘to sit’ means to be sitting in front of a screen and phone and being open for business). For less important games not featuring India, liquidity over the phone may be slightly reduced, however Skin accounts will still offer the same set account gearing on the action on Betfair. The liquidity on Betfair serves as a reliable guide for what bet size availability is available in India over the phone, regardless of match location or timing.
For football betting in India, the timing of the match kick-off can have a big impact on the bet sizes available, and whether bookies will even sit for the match. Only bets on the big five European leagues are offered over phone lines, however if there are markets available on Betfair, they will be available on Skin accounts also. For matches kicking off on a Saturday afternoon, full liquidity is offered by the phone bookies and thereore by Cricket88’s chat service. But let’s compare this to say a Wednesday night 19:45 GMT kick off which could be 01:15 in India (or 00:15 during BST). Most bookies aren’t handling a lot of action of top league football at this time. This is of course because not many genuine Indian bettors are watching and betting on a game for huge volumes at this time of night. And those that are have the option of betting through a Skin account. So for in-play betting during evening games in Europe, bets are not possible by phone, but are still possible on Skins. Pre-match betting in these games is possible but depends on the circumstances.
For tennis and horse racing betting in India, timing does make a big difference on volume available over the phones. For Skin account betting, again, if the market is on Betfair, you will be able to bet it on the Skin account. Major tennis tournaments, depending on their location, can be bet over the phone both pre-match and in-play. But you will often find much more liquidity on Wimbledon than at Melbourne.
