# Swedish: Sports betting



## Regina22

Hi,

Can anyone advise what is the best translation to “*Sports betting*” in Swedish?

The term refers to online betting on soccer matches, tennis, live sports events, etc. 

Thanks in advance!


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## cocuyo

One rather direct translation is "*spel på sporter*" which gives only a few hundred hits on a websearch. When introducing a particular sport, as "spel på fotboll" or "spel på hästar" etc there are considerably more hits on the web.


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## Segorian

My money would be on ‘idrottsvadslagning’ despite the clumsiness of that word. Several other options exist, including ‘sportvadhållning’ and ‘sportvadslagning’, both used at least occasionally by Svenska Spel.


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## Hans Molenslag

I was expecting to see the obvious answer that by far the most frequently used word to refer to online sports betting in present-day Swedish is the English loanword 'betting' (usually without 'sports'). There's an abundance of Swedish betting websites and apps, and apparently most of them simply use the English word.


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## AutumnOwl

Hans M. said:


> I was expecting to see the obvious answer that by far the most frequently used word to refer to online sports betting in present-day Swedish is the English loanword 'betting' (usually without 'sports'). There's an abundance of Swedish betting websites and apps, and apparently most of them simply use the English word.


"Betting" maybe the word online, but if you want to place a bet in a physical shop, then what you have to find is a "spelbutik", as cocuyo mentioned, Swedes "spelar" when placing bets on sports. Sometimes a "spelbutik" could be a shop selling computer games and such, but most likely it would be a betting shop.


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## Hans Molenslag

Sure, but the original question was about online betting specifically.


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## Regina22

Thanks everyone for the answers!

Actually, I was able to research online myself and found out that most of the Swedish sites use "Odds" - which is a bit weird, but maybe it is more understandable this way.

I thought that "Sportspel" would be ok for "Sports Betting", however it happened to refer mostly to sports computer games, and not real sports events.


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## Sepia

spel doesn't really say what it is about. "Spel" can mean a lot of things, jut usually not "betting".
The word used in official EU-translations is 

sportvadslagning


Informally some simply use the word "sports betting" - I have seen that on the Swedish language websites of the betting offices.


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## Regina22

Thanks so much! It turned out to be trickier than I thought


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## Sepia

Regina22 said:


> Thanks so much! It turned out to be trickier than I thought



An easy way to make such things "un-tricky" is to consider if someone else, possibly more qualified, may already have figured out a good translation. In many cases such words have already been used in some EU-directive or in some other text found on the Websites of EU-institutions. So once found there is usually an official translation into one of the other official EU-languages.


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