The Brand Split & How It Affects Some Bets

The big story coming out of WWE this week has been the news that there will be another brand split this July. This sort of has a bearing on some of the betting markets that are already out there.

There have been reports that both Raw and Smackdown will revert back to having brand-established world champions. If so, some special markets for world championships should become dead-heats while others will be voided.

888Sport.com, 32Red.com and Unibet.com have all been offering world championship prop markets to their clients. 

At the moment, the company has two WrestleMania 33 themed markets where customers can wager on the person who they believe will be holding the  'Heavyweight Championship' and 'Women Championship'. I've quoted how these championships are worded for a purpose that I will get to shortly. 

The reports I have heard and read since the news broke is that there is a possibility the Women's Championship will be a touring title that floats back-and-forth between shows similar to how the WWE Title was defended on either brand in the early stages of the 2002 brand split. So, for the purpose of this post, I'm going to disregard the 'Women Championship' and concentrate on the 'Heavyweight Championship'. If a second women's title is installed, the same thing I write about the male title applies here, anyway.

For the example, here is the wording of the market that is still available as of today (May 26th 2016):

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It reads: 'Results settled according to first official result declared by WWE.com at the end of the live broadcast. Dead heat rules apply in case  a new championship with similar characteristics is introduced within the relevant period. Bets will remain valid in case of eventual changes to character names, number of stipulated participants, date and/or location given that the event with the same characteristics is held within the listed year. No refunds on non-starters. Others on request.'

I have underlined the most important part.

If the the title is split up and it goes the way of the previous titles with the WWE Title being the 'WWE Championship' and the big gold belt coming back as the 'World Heavyweight Championship' - then - in my opinion, so this could always go another way - the bookmakers would have to pay out on the two champions. The aforementioned 'Dead-Heat Rule' per their terms should come into play.

For those of you unaware, the Dead-Heat Rule halves your stake but you still get the odds at the time your bet was struck. You lose half of your stake. This ruling is on many sports betting websites' rules, but I cannot see it on the 888Sport website as of the time of writing.

As an example, say that you have put £10 on Seth Rollins to be the champion at the close of WrestleMania and he was 10/1. He is the titleholder at its close, so your bet would become:

£5 stake + 10/1 odds = £55 return

If there isn't a brand split and one championship on the line, then you would return £110 so you can see how many will be hoping for one title come April.

The examples I used above is for the markets that have the Dead-Heat Rule. There are others that had been available in the spring that covered the possibility of the title being split up with a void clause. For example, here's the 'Road to WrestleMania 33' market where customers could bet 'Yes' or 'No' on whether any of the individuals on the list will become 'World Heavyweight Champion' at any point between the placement of the bet and the end of WrestleMania 33. 

Here's a screen capture I took on April 6th 2016:

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The rules are: 'To win the listed title between time of bet acceptance and the end of the specified event. For bets to be settled as YES the listed individual must win a title match. Awarded titles do not count. All bets stand irrespective of whether the listed individual will be involved in a match valid for the specified title during the timeframe. Bets will remain valid in case of eventual changes to character names, date and/or location given that an event with the same characteristics is held within the listed year. Should a new championship with similar characteristics be introduced during the relevant period, all pending bets will be settled as void.'

As the lined part indicates - if there is a second world title introduced beyond the schism, all bets should be off in this case. Whereas the 'World Championship' market should still be in play due the dead-heat rule.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with these markets in the future. Hopefully, they will continue to accommodate the new championships if that is what ends up happening in later on this summer.