Currently placing a bet is as simple as ordering your favorite food: you just need to open the website or open the app on your smartphone, and make a couple of clicks! However, it took a long time for betting to work effectively online, having made a long way of evolution. Here we have explained about a smooth transition of bookmaking from the offline segment to the digital one, what are the features of bookmaking, and the prospects for the development of sports betting in 2021.
History of Betting
People’s love for betting has existed since the days of the earliest major empires. In ancient Rome, the public adored gladiatorial fights, and in Ancient Greece, the Olympic Games were held. Sports betting was not a serious matter until the revolutionary moment in 1790. The British man William Ogden became the first bookmaker to organize betting on horse racing, thereby marking it as an independent economic segment of entertainment.
After 1961, many progressive countries legalized betting, welcoming tens of thousands of bookmakers. The transfer of sports betting to the legal space has become the second turning point in the history of the industry.
The development of smartphones based on iOS and Android has finally turned people’s attention in favor of online betting. For example, you can play Andar Bahar game for free from your smartphone.
How Offline and Online Betting Work
Modern casinos are like entertainment rooms with computers, large plasma panels, comfortable seating, an area for ordering food and drinks. You choose the outcome, deposit money through the cashier, get a coupon and wait for the result.
Online bookmakers are in the form of official websites and mobile apps. This allows a player to make a bet from any location and simplifies navigation via the available sports and bets. You add the outcome to the slip, allocate the amount, place a bet and wait for the result. The online option is more suitable for people who prefer to bet without too much noise around.
Prospects for the Development of Sports Betting
The numbers don’t lie – people are switching to an online format. Then why, do you still come across betting points now and then? The PPP is gradually turning into an exclusive one: the special atmosphere of live excitement resembles the same classic time-tested format. A sports betting club is evolving into a large-format sports fans club, where betting is only part of the functionality.
The Zion Market Research publication predicts the growth of the global online betting segment to $155 billion by 2024 (from 104 billion in 2017). This is due to not only a person’s unwillingness to spend lots of time betting but also to the development of new sports disciplines – for example, eSports.
Players often complain that online offices block their accounts for no reason, winning amounts are not paid, and limits are cut. According to the CEO of BetMatch, blockchain and tokenization will come to the rescue, hence, the human factor and the influence of third parties on the processing of bets will practically come to naught. All this will lead to an even greater shift in the focus of players’ attention towards online betting.
Another inevitable trend in 2021 and later will be the virtualization of online betting. Betting companies believe that thanks to virtual reality (VR) technologies the betting process will be simplified: you point the smartphone camera at the player, choose a bet and that’s it. William Hill bookmaker presented a prototype of a VR system for betting back in 2015. The technology called “Get In The Race” reproduced the atmosphere of presence at horse races, as if you were a jockey. It is clear that in the future such projects will be of interest to people and investors.
Offline betting has come a long way before the online segment became a reality. Nowadays, there is a clear trend of transition from traditional betting to the Internet space. In the future, the online segment will only grow, acquiring new features and functionality.
