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How and when sports betting started
The first record of sports betting has been found on the books around 2000 years back. Greeks were a lover of sports and they lead the beginning of the Olympic Games in the world. At the same time, they introduced sports betting - back then betting was done only on athletic games.
Sometime later, betting became very popular in England in the sport of horse racing. The British people introduced gambling to other countries, especially in the USA, where it became very popular and was widely accepted as the favourite pastime of many people. In the current era, sports betting has become very popular both in the US and across Europe.
In the fifties and sixties, Las Vegas legalized sports betting in the physical casinos which were popularly known as offline betting. If you were a resident of Las Vegas, you could have walked into any casino and place a bet. Though Las Vegas used to account for billions of dollars in betting business every year, a huge amount of sports betting was done outside Las Vegas in the USA. That huge amount of sports betting business was operated by offshore bookmakers and local bookies. These huge numbers of offshore bookies were ignored by law enforcement agencies.
How online betting changed the market
The real fuelling of the sports betting market started with the advent of the Internet. With the penetration of the Internet in millions of homes in different countries, many online casinos came into existence helping people to bet from their homes or office from their computer devices. There was no need to go to physical casinos and online betting sites started guiding the newcomers and also offered lucrative joining bonuses. People started watching the event live on their television and make bets sitting on the couch from the comfort of their home. Starting from boxing to athlete to football and cricket, all events are now shown live on television. You can even bet on horse racing or car race or wrestling and darts and pool and more. But among all the sports, football remains the most popular event for betting.
The arrival of the Smartphone further fuelled the growth of the sports betting market as people started finding the world sports betting market within their grips. Now it is a billion-dollar market in the USA alone, leave aside the huge European and Asian market. With a Smartphone in your hand, you can bet on any sporting event from any corner of the globe. The sportsbooks who have opened a website are earning in millions from betters around the world surging ahead of the growth of the sports betting market. For sports betting online, check world's best 888sport's special feature here.
The sports which allow you betting
Over the years the number of sports events expanded and with more sporting events coming within the gambit of it, sport betting has become increasingly popular over the past thirty to forty years. Today bettors can bet on American football to baseball to horse racing and on a wide variety of sporting events that did not even exist even a century ago. Basketball, football, badminton, boxing, and cricket have also been included in sports betting. But sport betting is no more a fun activity these days, but a multi-million dollar business which generates huge profits to the clubs, leagues, casinos, and sportsbooks all over the world.
With the surge in online betting, payout of the players increased substantially
As the craze for sports betting is on the rise turning it into a million-dollar business, clubs only want a share of it. In the spring of 2019, Americans spent $8.5 billion on college basketball games alone. It is a proven fact that people who bet on a particular game are more likely to view the game. It has been seen that bettors constitute 25% of the audience of NFL viewership. As the numbers of bettors are increasing to millions, TV viewership of the event is also on the rise. The betting companies earn in billions and they give 20 to 30 percent of their revenue back to the clubs in the form of advertisement or sponsorship. Thus the clubs are earning a huge amount of money in billions, both directly and indirectly from sports betting companies.
As a result, the payout of the players has gone up to a great extent, some of them earning in billions, no less than a top-class businessman. It is astonishing to find that earnings of Lionel Messi stands at $127 million in a year and the net worth of David Beckham stands at $450 million. Believe it or not, all this has been possible with the huge increase in online betting money. As more bettors bet and get involved in the action, the players in all sports have seen a huge surge in their payouts.
