There are various 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” inside 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 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 of any other sport.

Today the matter is a good deal different. Walk past the now more inviting frontage associated with any bookmaker’s and also 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 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 view Efg soccer punters as the small slips are for the greater traditional horse racing enthusiasts.

Of course by far the largest transformation in the culture of betting accompanied the arrival of the web 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 such as Ladbrokes, William Hill, Coral and Paddy Power all have a major online presence, but they will be in company of the large US-facing offshore sportsbooks for example Pinnacle, and 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 will be able to manage 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 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 ahead of the Internet intervened, although the selection 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 maybe a few of other big sports when the occasion arose, customers of the internet 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 provide 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 kinds of alternatives within each selection. So with a soccer match, by way of example, for a number of bet not simply on the winner of the fixture but also on the range of goals scored, the name of the very first scorer, the total range of goals, the time of the first goal, the total number of corners taken and the range of bookings to name but a few.