There are many 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” within this context one means simply which runner could 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 even an important boxing bout. Nonetheless the grim, smoky street corner bookmaker’s shop was essentially synonymous with horse racing approximately to the exclusion of the other sport.

Today the situation is a good deal different. Walk past the now more inviting frontage associated with any bookmaker’s and Continued also you will be brazenly invited to predict the score of the next major soccer game and also the name of the first or perhaps the last player to score a goal. Costs 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 biggest 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 of the traditional high street bookmakers such as Ladbrokes, William Hill, Coral and Paddy Power all have an important online presence, however they are in company of the large US-facing offshore sportsbooks such as Pinnacle, as well as of some much smaller and 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, as well as 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 before the Internet intervened, though 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 maybe a couple of other big sports when the occasion arose, customers of the internet sportsbooks can select from between a really 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 offer prices on such enormously well recognized sports as trotting, bandy and innebandy.

And not just is there such a selection of sports to pick from, but there are also all kinds of options available within each selection. So with a soccer match, as an example, for various bet not simply on the winner of the fixture but in addition 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 number of bookings to name but several.