The Evolution of Sports Betting

Sports and gambling go hand in hand. There isn’t a stronger excitement dose that you can get than combining the two. People love to follow sports, they have their favorite teams and players, and sometimes they even have the knowledge to predict who will win. That’s when the world of sports and gambling collide. Today sports betting is available in many forms from traditional betting to advanced online platforms, like sportsbet.io. The recipe for success is quite simple; you analyze the game, predict the winner, and get rich. Sports enthusiasts know how sports betting works, but do you know its rich history? Let’s talk about the evolution of sports betting.

How it all started

It is impossible to name one date indicating when sports betting started. But to give you a perspective, there are documents that suggest that during the first Olympic Games you could have bet on your favorite contestants. It is described by historians that during ancient times, people were very passionate about gambling. The bets were exchanged between the rich and the poor, the wise and those without education. When it came to sports betting, who you were didn’t matter.

During the Industrial Revolution, horse betting introduced the role of the bookmaker. It made sports betting more sophisticated and highly popular among the aristocracy. Later, only the owners of the horses could bet during a race.

The fun lasted for centuries, and finally, at the end of the 19th century, sports betting officially became a sport itself. The Gambling Act was created in 1845, and sports betting got regulated. Since then, a lot of different disciplines were included, and commissions were formed. You were able to place a bet using cash, and the bookmakers could have given you credit for a bet.

XX century, the century that changed sports betting forever

After the First World War, the most popular sport to bet on was still horse racing, but football was added to the gambling pool, and it took off really fast. The most famous football game for sports betting at the time was called “Treble Chance,” where players could place a bet on 10-12 football matches for the coming weekend. After the Second World War, the betters were introduced to the 1X2 (1 – win, X – draw, and 2 – lose) formula, where you needed to predict a set of 12 to 15 games at a time. This form of betting resembled today’s lottery ticket, but without them being random. Liverpool, UK was one of the most popular gambling places on Earth at the time.

Egyptian Zamalek of Cairo forward Mohamed

The world of online sports betting

Then, the Internet is born, and it feels like the world gets an upgrade like never before. The introduction of the World Wide Web changes the way we work, the way we live, and, most importantly, makes gambling global. You can now place a bet on your favorite sports without leaving your home.

The first sports betting sites were created in 1995. The governments needed to develop new regulation as well to enable legal gambling online. There are still companies that started back then and operated till the present day.

In the year 2000, the company called Betfair revolutionized the sports betting industry once again. They introduced peer-to-peer betting, offering their customers to place bets between each other.

Later first live betting platforms launched in 2002. Live betting meant that you could have placed a bet during the event.

Today, it is estimated that bets in the United States of America are worth every year anywhere between 100 billion to 400 billion dollars. You can place a bet on any sports imaginable, and the numbers really show that, as there are no less than 20,000 bets available every day around the world. All you have to do is choose one.

The forecast for the future

The good news is that sports betting isn’t going anywhere. People have been betting on sports for as long as sports exist. There is no reason to believe this will change in the future. The Internet and smartphones continue to increase the level of the growth of sports betting. Today almost every platform out there has a dedicated application for mobile devices. What is happening today in the world of sports betting, feels like it is just the beginning of a larger revolution.

As the future goes, What you can expect is the rise of virtual reality sports betting and cryptocurrency sports betting. Perhaps the best example of the predicted growth and future of sports betting is daily fantasy sports (DFS). Daily fantasy sports are legal in most states in the United States, and experts feel that it will lead the way in making sports betting even more mainstream.

Sports betting has a rich and long history that is worth exploring. The way we gamble today is so much different than how it used to be, and as a player, you know that to be able to predict the future, you need to know the past. One thing is for sure, you can now and will be able to place a bet at all times, no matter what the future holds or us.

 

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