There are lots 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 perhaps 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 a person 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 the other sport.

Today the specific situation is a great 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 excellent 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 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 simply do all the traditional high street bookmakers such as Ladbrokes, William Hill, Coral and Paddy Power all have a significant online presence, however they are within company of the large US-facing offshore sportsbooks for example Pinnacle, and of some much smaller as well as 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 simply are there quite literally hundreds of times more sportsbooks available to the everyday punter today than was the situation prior to the Internet intervened, but 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 couple of other big sports when the occasion arose, customers of the on-line 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), as well as 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 there's also all kinds of choices available within each selection. So with a soccer match, one example is for several bet not simply on the winner of the fixture but also on the range of goals scored, the name of the first scorer, the total number of goals, the time of the very first goal, the total range of corners taken and the number of bookings to name but a number of.