Betting on sports is as old as many of the sports themselves. Even the Romans would bet on the outcome of chariot races hundreds of years ago!
How to Place a Bet
To place one down, you need to know what type of sport you want to bet on. Let’s take the example of tennis betting here. Imagine it is the final match of the Men’s Competition at Wimbledon, and you decide that you want to place a wager on the outcome of the match. First, you need to head to one of our most trusted online betting sites! At PlayRight, we continuously review sports betting operators to give you the full picture of current best bonuses from the UK’s most reputable brands. Whether you want to place a bet on the tennis, or maybe some odds for darts betting have caught your eye, we will be able to point you in the right direction.
So, you now have your ideal betting sites. Sign up, grab the welcome bonus, and make a deposit so you have some funds to bet. You can then head over to the tennis section of the sports betting site and select the match that you want, in the case of our example – the Wimbledon final. You can bet outright on the outcome of the match, but you can also place many other smaller bets within this. This is the same for every sport.
For example, in tennis, you might bet on who is going to take the first set. In rugby betting, it might be on whether or not a specific player can score a try. In boxing betting, you can often place a wager on the method of victory, and the same can go for UFC betting too. Each sport has its own little quirks that could affect the outcome of the game, and these can be reflected in the types of wager that you can place.
What Can You Bet on in the UK?
If you can think of a sport in the UK, chances are that you are going to be able to place a bet on it! We are a sports-loving nation, and so there are plenty of opportunities out there for us to wager on our favourites!
This can most clearly be seen in football betting. You would expect to find the Premier League matches, as well as big international tournaments like the UEFA Champions League or the FIFA World Cup. However, the bigger sites will also offer bets for leagues of all sizes, both here in the UK and abroad. You could place a bet on the Scottish Professional Football League, but you could also just as easily place one on the German Bundesliga or La Liga in Spain.
Racing and greyhound betting still prove to be popular, as do options for other spectator sports. You might not think that snooker betting or Formula 1 betting would draw that much of a crowd – but it does!
A growing market we have also seen in the last few years is eSports betting. eSports, or competitive gaming, has been around for decades, but there has been a real boom recently that has spawned multimillion league franchises with big prize pots up for grabs for players and lots of betting opportunities for spectators.
You might also be able to occasionally find betting options for a range of other topics too. TV shows are a popular genre, with many people placing bets on the winners of reality shows like Love Island or X-Factor. It is also quite common to find betting options for political events too. Bets on who might be the next Prime Minister can often be found as an example here. Online betting sites are able to offer odds on so many different things!
Types of Bet
Of course, there are many different types of bet, and you might want to learn a little bit about each one before you opt for it. Here are some of the most common types of bets that you could place, and what they mean:
- Straight Bet – Nice and simply, a straight bet is when you bet on the outcome of a game. So, for cricket betting as an example, you would bet that Team A would win over Team B. It is the most straightforward of the bets that you could place.
- Handicap Betting – handicap betting occurs when one team is considered to be a lot weaker than the others. The bookies will give that team a deficit to even the playing field. You are then betting on the team winning with the exact margin the bookies have offered.
- Full Cover Betting – A full cover bet gives you the chance to place multiple bets in one. There are several different types of full cover bets, including accumulators, and you will have a minimum amount that you need to win to be able to grab a win overall.
- Conditional Betting – Though they are rare, you can occasionally find conditional bets. These allow the bettor to set minimum requirements down that must be fulfilled for the bet to then take place. For example, you could place a bet on Liverpool to win a match, but only if Mo Salah is in the starting line-up.
- Forecast Betting – Forecast betting can be frequently found in greyhound and racing betting. A classic win would be to predict who will come in place in 1st and 2nd in a race – the selections must finish in the chosen order to qualify.
- Spread Betting – Spread betting allows gamblers to wager on whether or not a certain outcome (or spread) will come to pass. For example, a betting brand might predict the total number of goals scored in a football match. They will then offer spread bets where gamblers can choose whether or not they come in above or below that.
- Specialty Betting – Specialty bets can be quite complex, and they can have very detailed parameters that need to be met to trigger a win. However, they can still offer great odds, so they are always worth checking out!
