Online sports betting

Online sports betting has totally changed the whole gambling industry through the years. Sports betting and casino betting on the internet has a story slightly exceeding a quarter of a century, but has developed so much, that according to various estimates the market worth about USD 40 billion every year. Online sports betting has changed also a lot, as it has begun with only final result predictions and has developed extremely to include hundreds of different betting markets in every sports tie.

The online sports betting venue opened to the general public, was ticketing for the Liechtenstein International Lottery back in October 1994. The grand duchy in the middle of Europe was the pioneer, but soon almost all countries of the globe followed. Many of them decided to restrict, or even ban online gambling. But it’s legal to gamble online in almost every nation of the Western world, aka the United States, Canada, Australia, the Caribbean, most of Africa and most of Western Europe. However, in many legal markets, online gambling service providers are required by law to have some form of license if they wish to provide services or advertise to residents there.

The first online casino also was offered to the public in 1994. The Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda passed the Free Trade & Processing Act, allowing licenses to be granted to organizations applying to open online casinos.

A market’s boost

The secure software and the safe transactions through the internet, which became viable, literally boosted the online gambling market. There were no more than 14 online betting websites operating in 1996, but they’ve grown to more than 200 in early 1998. The total economic growth or the market boosted as well. As internet services became available and popular throughout the globe, a growing number of people participated in online gambling. According to estimations, in 2020 more than 400 million people worldwide have been exposed to online gambling, either casino or sports betting.

The first form of online sports betting was only the moneyline bets. These bets don’t have a spread or handicap, odds are offered in all aspects of the final result (a home win, an away win and a draw in football matches). There were some online bookmakers who offered only the most popular European football leagues, and in several occasions a bet on a single event was not allowed. Doubles and even trebles was the usual form of play these days.

Singles, Asians and parlays

Single bets followed, as the Asian market was rushing through. Asian bettors, high rollers in particular, would like to wage their bets in single bets, so all online bookmakers soon started to offer single bets in every market.

Asian markets introduced the spread betting. This form of betting is now globally known as “Asian handicap betting”, because of its popularity especially in the Far East. The line is a number assigned by the bookmakers which handicaps one team and favors another when two teams play each other and one is perceived as being more likely to win, in order to avoid the possibility of a tie.

Parlays are still a popular way of betting. A parlay involves multiple bets that rewards successful bettors with a greater payout but only if all bets in the parlay win. A parlay is at least two bets, but can be as many as 15, depending on the online bookmaker’s rules. The possible payout of the parlay is determined by the combined likelihood of all bets placed.

Special bets

The popularity of online sports betting has pushed the bookmakers over to offer a series of other special bet, just to increase the interest of gamblers and the total amount of money placed. An always increasing number of special bets came into existence. There are generally two types of such bets:

Total bets: These are wagers made based on the total score between both teams. These are popular bets not only in football, but also in basketball and all American sports.

Proposition bets: These are wagers made on a very specific outcome of a match not related to the final score. There are betting markets for the number of goals a star player scores in a football match, or the exact number of rebounds of specific basketball pleayers, or each the number of aces a tennis player will have during a tie.

In-play betting

The live betting, on in-play betting, is a betting revolution in progress. It first appeared towards the end of the 1990s, when some bookmakers would take bets over the telephone whilst a sports event was in progress, and has developed into the most popular betting type. Bookmakers instantly increased the number of markets available to bet on during sports events, and gamblers are able to place bets based on many different types of in-game activity during the matches.

In-play sports betting has changed the mechanics of gambling for sports bettors, as they are now able to place a larger number of bets during a single sports game (as opposed to a single bet on who is going to win). The aspect of the market now has been turned what was previously a discontinuous form of gambling into a continuous one, as before the live betting a punter could only place a pre-match bet.

Cash out

The most recent addition in sports betting evolution is the cash out function. This lets the user of a betting website take profit early if their bet is coming in, or get some of their stake back if their bet is going agains.. Cash Out offers are optionally made by the website in real time on some of the current bets held by the user. Cash out function has developed on digital betting websites after 2008, firstly from betting exchanges. But it was soon adopted by online bookmakers. It is regularly offered on a wide range of sports, including American football, tennis, horse racing, basketball, and most other markets.