Bandy – The world’s second most popular winter sport

Bandy is a winter sport played on ice and can best be described as a cross between ice hockey, field hockey and football. In fact, it’s sometimes referred to as ‘winter football.’
With ice hockey, it obviously shares the similarity of being played on an ice rink with players wearing the same sort of skates they use in ice hockey. The ball, a hard one that in this case is always orange to be seen clearly on ice, is very similar to that used in field hockey as are the sticks whilst with football it shares the size of the ‘pitch’, with many of the positions of the pitch, and the number of players (11) also the same. Bandy also uses the offside rule in the same way as it does in football though the showing of a blue card in bandy is different to that of a yellow card in football.
Bandy is very much the predecessor to floorball, which was adapted so as to be played indoors in gym halls.
Because of the need for an ice rink to play the game, it’s understandably only played in very cold countries such as Sweden, Finland, Norway, Russia and Kazakhstan. In fact, only those five countries have ever won medals at the Bandy World Championships. Not only that but all but one editions have been won by Sweden or Russia (some as the Soviet Union) with the exception of the 2004 edition won by Finland. The World Championship takes place every year, as does the World Cup, which is played by the world’s best club teams. It always takes place on Swedish soil.
At Betsson you can bet on several bandy markets on big matches including the match winner, how many goals will be scored and the final correct score.