There are many of us who are old sufficient to remember the time when sports betting effectively meant betting on the outcome of either a horse race or a greyhound race. By “outcome” in this particular context one means simply which runner could be the winner, or which would come writes in the official Itb blog placed.
It was not unheard of for a person to place a bet on a football match or even an important boxing bout. Nonetheless the grim, smoky street corner bookmaker’s shop was essentially synonymous with horse racing more or less to the exclusion of the other sport.
Today the situation is a good deal different. Walk past the now more inviting frontage of the bookmaker’s and also you will be brazenly invited to predict the score of the next major soccer game and also the name of the first or even the last player to score a goal. Prices are offered on many sports and “long list” coupons are every bit as freely readily available for soccer punters as the small slips are for the better traditional horse racing enthusiasts.
Of course by far the biggest transformation in the culture of betting accompanied the arrival of the net as the means through which we now spend most of our time communicating with the outside world. Not only do all the traditional high street bookmakers such as Ladbrokes, William Hill, Coral and Paddy Power all have an important online presence, nevertheless they are within company of the large US-facing offshore sportsbooks for example Pinnacle, as well as of some much smaller and many more obscure outfits whose budgets had never stretched to a chain of shops but who all of the same are able to deal with a site.
Online sports betting has drastically altered the culture of gambling for all time. Hobbyists and professionals alike can now place wagers at the click of a mouse, and may even where necessary lay their selections at one of the betting exchanges to lock in a guaranteed profit.
Not just are there quite literally hundreds of times more sportsbooks available to the everyday punter today than was the situation prior to the Internet intervened, however the range of sports that will be covered has mushroomed similarly. Whereas at the old betting shop the focus was largely on horse and greyhound racing with a smaller emphasis on football as well as maybe a few of other big sports in the event the occasion arose, customers of the on-line sportsbooks can select from between a very substantial array of lines on sports as diverse as soccerrugby union, rugby league, cricket, boxing, volleyball, motor racing, darts, snooker and US sports (football, hockey, baseball and basketball), as well as current affairs, politics, stage and film awards and reality TV. Some of the continental books provide prices on such enormously well-known sports as trotting, bandy and innebandy.
And not simply is there such a selection of sports to pick from, but there’s also all sorts of available options within each selection. So with a soccer match, by way of example, one can bet not simply on the winner of the fixture but in addition on the range of goals scored, the name of the first scorer, the total range of goals, the time of the very first goal, the total number of corners taken and also the range of bookings to name but a couple of.