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There are several of us who are old enough to remember the time when sports betting effectively meant betting on the outcome of either a horse race or perhaps a greyhound race. By “outcome” in this particular context one means simply which runner could be the winner, or which would come in placed.
It was not unheard of for a person to place a bet on a football match or 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 any other sport.
Today the specific situation is a great deal different. Walk past the now more inviting frontage of the 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 available for 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 only do all of the traditional high street bookmakers such as Ladbrokes, William Hill, Coral and Paddy Power all have a major quality online football gambling presence, but they are in company of the large US-facing offshore sportsbooks for example Pinnacle, and also of some much smaller and even more obscure outfits whose budgets had never stretched to a chain of shops but who all the same will be able to manage a website.
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 also can even where necessary lay their selections at among 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, although the variety of sports that are 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 couple of other big sports in the event the occasion arose, customers of the internet sportsbooks can select from between an extremely 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), and also 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 just is there such a selection of sports to select from, but additionally there are all sorts of alternatives 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 range of goals scored, the name of the very first scorer, the total range of goals, the time of the first goal, the total number of corners taken and also the range of bookings to name but a couple of.
