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There are several 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 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 more or less to the exclusion of the other sport.
Today the specific situation is a good 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 as well as the name of the very 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 playing soccer online punters as the small slips are for the more 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 simply do all of the traditional high street bookmakers for example Ladbrokes, William Hill, Coral and Paddy Power all have a major online presence, but they are in company of the large US-facing offshore sportsbooks such as Pinnacle, and also 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 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 can also even where necessary lay their selections at one of 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 case ahead of 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 perhaps a few of other big sports in the event the occasion arose, customers of the online 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), and also current affairs, politics, stage and film awards and reality TV. Some of the continental books also offer prices on such enormously well-known sports as trotting, bandy and innebandy.
And not only is there such a selection of sports to choose from, but additionally there are all kinds of available choices within each selection. So with a soccer match, for example, it’s possible to bet not simply on the winner of the fixture but in addition on the number of goals scored, the name of the first scorer, the total range of goals, the time of the very first goal, the total range of corners taken as well as the range of bookings to name but a few.