There are plenty of 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 perhaps a greyhound race. By "outcome" in the context one means simply which runner will 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 perhaps 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 of the 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 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 greater traditional horse racing enthusiasts.

Of-course by far the largest transformation within the culture of betting accompanied the arrival of the internet as the means through which we now spend most of our time communicating with the outside world. Not just do all of the traditional high street bookmakers for example Ladbrokes, William Hill, Coral and Paddy Power all have a serious online presence, but they will be in company of the large US-facing offshore sportsbooks such as Pinnacle, and additionally of some much smaller and a lot more obscure outfits whose budgets had never stretched to a chain of shops but who all of the same are 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, 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 prior to the Internet intervened, although the variety 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 learn football and perhaps a couple of other big sports in the event the occasion arose, customers of the online sportsbooks can select from between a very 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 available, but additionally, there are all sorts of choices available within each selection. So with a soccer match, for example, for a number of bet not simply on the winner of the fixture but also on the number of goals scored, the name of the first scorer, the total range of goals, the time of the very first goal, the total range of corners taken and also the number of bookings to name but a couple of.