There are lots 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 a greyhound race. By "outcome" in this particular context one means simply which runner would 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 approximately to the exclusion of any other sport.
Today the situation is a great 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 also the name of the very first or 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 largest transformation within 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 for example Ladbrokes, William Hill, Coral and Paddy Power all have a major online presence, nevertheless they will be in company of the large US-facing offshore sportsbooks for
edpschool.edu writes example Pinnacle, and of some much smaller and even 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 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 simply are there quite literally hundreds of times more sportsbooks available to the everyday punter today than was the situation ahead of the Internet intervened, though the selection 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 perhaps 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), as well as current affairs, politics, stage and film awards and reality TV. Several of the continental books provide prices on such enormously well-known sports as trotting, bandy and innebandy.
And not just is there such a selection of sports available, but there are also all kinds of options available within each selection. So with a soccer match, one example is it's possible to bet not only on the winner of the fixture but in addition on the range of goals scored, the name of the first scorer, the total number of goals, the time of the first goal, the total range of corners taken and also the range of bookings to name but a couple of.