Sport betting nowadays is one of the most common hobbies around the world, especially for sports enthusiasts, because it allows them a lot of different things on the same time and to be closer to the action during major events, they can also prove others their knowledge about events that will happen on the future, and celebrate the success of the teams involved with other spectators, there is also the need to mention that the history of sport bets is long and varied, we can take the story of sport bets during different eras of human history, despite the sport event that it was happening at the moment.
With the existence of internet sport betting has evolved on an increasing speed, however we can take back sport betting decades before the existence of the internet and social media, we have seen examples of this in history and pop culture, we can mention for example in the series from the BBC, Peaky Blinders, which is situated during the 1920's and 1930's, in the city of Birmingham, in which there are sport bets such as horse races and football, we can take sport betting history to the ancient Greece, during the first Olympic games that took place there, in which people tend to bet in their favorite discipline.
One of the parts of human history in which sport betting was very popular was during the existence of the Roman Empire, in which people bet during the shows in the coliseum between gladiators, battles that mark this era of mankind, besides the fights in the coliseum which are the more recognizable ones, we can mention the ones that took place in the Roman circuses which created from sport bets a huge marketable business in that era for the empire.
Afterwards, sport betting became a part of society. However, it was not that prominent during certain eras of mankind such as some sports were, for example, during the middle age in England, where duels between gentlemen was something very popular at the time, sport bets in this specific sport were not that popular or common at the time, they might have existed at the time, however, they were not as popular as the sports were at the time.
To start to talk of a prominence of sport betting we have to move forward a very long period of time, we have to travel to a period between the XVIII and XIX century, and we have to locate in England, where horse races started to have prominence, and also other sports such as greyhound races with dogs of the galgo bred, we can take England as the birth place of modern sport betting. However, we have to mention the prominence of them also in the United States, which happened half a century into the future.
After that period of time, sport betting only kept growing and growing. The appearance of betting houses or most commonly known as bookmakers, all around the world just made sport betting more popular and common with the time, and the expansion of betting houses or bookmakers allowed the expansion of sports in which people could bet, nowadays people can bet in almost every existent sport around.
For example today people mostly bet in sports like association football, American football, baseball, basketball, hockey, track cycling, auto racing, mixed martial arts, boxing, and also other sports such as horse and greyhound racing.
Normally, sport bettors place their bets through a bookmarker or sports book, the term book comes as a reference to the books wage brokers used to track payouts, wagers and debts in the past.
Due to the expansion and prominence of the internet since 2002, sport betting houses have passed from established places, located on a physical area to be developed on the internet in which sport bettors have more freedom and also have more commodities at the time of making their bets. For example, nowadays someone can place a bet for the final of the Champions League in the comfort of their own home, without having to move to a location or making a phone call.
Online Sports Betting & Odds
Nowadays more bets are done by the internet, through websites created by the bookmakers or betting houses, in which they place every sport in which people can bet, this bets follow every legal standard established for them to exist, it is very strange to see physical bookmakers or betting houses, however, all over the world they are still found, anyway people prefer to place their bets through their trusted websites and from whenever they want, at any moment they want.There are a lot of different kind of bets that can be made today, we can mention a few of them, such as money line bets, in which the person chooses who is going to win, the favored team pays lower odds than the less favorite team, known as the underdog, thus, the underdogs has a better payout than the other team, this one is one of the most famous and common bets that are offered all around the world.
Other types of bets that we can mention are spreed beating, which work with expectancy, also we can mention total (over/under) bets, in which both teams or players involved have a combined score prospection, and the person bet on that score prospection, and can get it right, or also can go over or under that prospection and that affects the bet, and parleys, which are multiple bets being taken on the same time, which can award the sport bettors with a great amount payout, but the sport bettors will only get that payment if all the bets on the parley win, a parley can be from 2 bets to any other amount, normally the bookmaker is who determines the amount of bet that consists the parley.