There are several 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 would 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 approximately to the exclusion of any 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 soccer game and also the name of the very 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 available for soccer punters as the small slips are for the greater traditional horse racing enthusiasts.

Of course by far the largest transformation within 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 only do all the traditional high street bookmakers such as Ladbrokes, William Hill, Coral and Paddy Power all have an important online presence, but they will be in company of the large US-facing offshore sportsbooks for example Pinnacle, and additionally of some much smaller as well as more obscure outfits whose budgets had never stretched to a chain of shops but who all of the same are able to deal with a site.

Online sports betting has drastically altered the culture of gambling for all time. Hobbyists and professionals alike can now place wagers over at this website 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 just are there quite literally hundreds of times more sportsbooks available to the everyday punter today than was the case ahead of the Internet intervened, but 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 possibly a few of other big sports when the occasion arose, customers of the online 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 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 additionally, there are all sorts of choices available within each selection. So with a soccer match, for instance, for several bet not just on the winner of the fixture but additionally on the range of goals scored, the name of the 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 several.