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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 will be the winner, or which may come in placed.
It was not unheard of for someone to place a bet on a football match or perhaps 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 matter is a great deal different. Walk past the now more inviting frontage associated with any bookmaker’s and you will be brazenly invited to predict the score of the next major soccer game and the name of the very first or even the last player to score a goal. Costs are offered on many sports and “long list” coupons are every bit as freely readily available for good soccer punters as the small slips are for the greater traditional horse racing enthusiasts.
Of course by far the largest 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 just do all the traditional high street bookmakers for example Ladbrokes, William Hill, Coral and Paddy Power all have a significant online presence, however they are within company of the large US-facing offshore sportsbooks for example Pinnacle, and also of some much smaller and more obscure outfits whose budgets had never stretched to a chain of shops but who all of the same will be able to deal with a web page.
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 also even where necessary lay their selections at one of the betting exchanges to lock in a guaranteed profit.
Not only are there quite literally hundreds of times more sportsbooks available to the everyday punter today than was the situation prior to the Internet intervened, although 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 and possibly a few of other big sports when the occasion arose, customers of the online sportsbooks can select from between a really 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. Several of the continental books also offer prices on such enormously well recognized sports as trotting, bandy and innebandy.
And not simply is there such a selection of sports to pick from, but additionally there are all sorts of available choices within each selection. So with a soccer match, for instance, you can bet not just on the winner of the fixture but also on the number of goals scored, the name of the very first scorer, the total range of goals, the time of the very first goal, the total number of corners taken as well as the number of bookings to name but a number of.
