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 possibly a greyhound race. By “outcome” in this 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 situation is a good 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 also 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 more traditional horse racing enthusiasts.

Of-course by far the biggest 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 the traditional high street bookmakers for example Ladbrokes, William Hill, Coral and Paddy Power all have a serious online presence, however they are within company of the large US-facing offshore sportsbooks such as Pinnacle, and of some much smaller and many 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.

best online casino football 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, as well as can 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 case ahead of the Internet intervened, though 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 perhaps a few of other big sports when the occasion arose, customers of the on-line 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 additionally 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 just is there such a selection of sports to choose from, but additionally there are all sorts of alternatives within each selection. So with a soccer match, for example, for a number of 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 number of goals, the time of the first goal, the total number of corners taken as well as the number of bookings to name but a few.