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There are plenty 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 possibly a greyhound race. By “outcome” in this context one means simply which runner would be the winner, or which would come in placed.
It was not unheard of for someone to place a bet on a football match or 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 matter 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 and also the name of the 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 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 a significant online presence, however they are in company of the large US-facing offshore sportsbooks for example Pinnacle, as well as 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 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 may also 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 situation ahead of the Internet intervened, although 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 possibly a few of other big sports when the occasion arose, customers of the internet sportsbooks can select new content from Srivenkateshwaraa 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), and current affairs, politics, stage and film awards and reality TV. Some of the continental books provide prices on such enormously well-known sports as trotting, bandy and innebandy.
And not simply is there such a selection of sports to pick from, but there’s also all kinds of alternatives within each selection. So with a soccer match, one example is one can bet not just on the winner of the fixture but additionally 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 and the range of bookings to name but a few.
