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There are plenty of 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 possibly a greyhound race. By “outcome” within this context one means simply which runner would be the winner, or which may come in 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 associated with any other sport.
Today the situation is a good deal different. Walk past the now more inviting frontage of any bookmaker’s and also you will be brazenly invited to predict the score of the next major soccer game and the name of the first or perhaps the last player to score a goal. Prices 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 more traditional horse racing enthusiasts.
Of course by far the biggest transformation in the culture of betting accompanied the arrival of the internet as the means through which we now spend most of our time communicating with the outside world. Not just do all of the traditional high street bookmakers such as Ladbrokes, William Hill, Coral and Paddy Power all have an important online presence, however they will be in company of the large US-facing offshore sportsbooks for example Pinnacle, and also of some much smaller as well as more obscure outfits whose budgets had never stretched to a chain of shops but who all 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 On this page of a mouse, as well as can even where necessary lay their selections at among 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 case prior to the Internet intervened, but the array of sports which 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 maybe a couple of other big sports when the occasion arose, customers of the on-line 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 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 available, but there’s also all kinds of alternatives available within each selection. So with a soccer match, by way of example, for several bet not simply on the winner of the fixture but additionally on the number of goals scored, the name of the very first scorer, the total range of goals, the time of the first goal, the total range of corners taken and also the range of bookings to name but a number of.
