One of the keys to the success of the gambling industry has been the ability of companies to spot trends quickly and act on them in a timely manner.
This was certainly the case when the internet became mainstream and people started using it for shopping. All of the major stores around the world created a website to sell their products online. Therefore, it was natural that bookmakers would do the same but why are most bookmakers moving online?
Initially, the only way you could place a bet on a sporting event legally was by doing so in a betting shop. During the peak period there was thought to be over 16,000 betting shops in the United Kingdom alone but by 2012 there was fewer than 10,000. One of the main reasons why most bookmakers are moving online is due to costs.
In many cases, a bookmaker does not own the building they occupy and is having to rent the space. In addition, the company also has to pay for staff to run the shop plus pay electricity, water, gas and other bills to keep the shop running.
By moving online, the bookmaker no longer has to pay rent, staff or bills and is therefore saving a great deal of money.
New sports bookies are regularly appearing online and while some of these may be new creations entirely, occasionally you will find a brick and mortar bookmaker has made the move to the online world, a prime example being VOdds.
They’re a massive Asian handicap betting platform that offer aggregated real-time odds from a comprehensive list of difficult to reach Asian bookies.
They have a growing list of bookmakers includes Pinnacle Sports, SBOBET, MaxBet, and plenty more to choose from. Users can access VOdds through the usual channels of vodds.com, vodds.co or vodds.net, or can even use a VPN for uninterrupted access. Not only are most bookmakers moving online to help save costs it also gives them the opportunity to offer a wider range of sports betting markets.
Using a betting slip in a betting shop allows for a decent choice of betting markets on football matches for example but it cannot match the selection available online. It is very straight forward to add a new betting market to a football match online, all it takes is a quick line of code but that is not the case in a betting shop. Most betting shops would need to reprint the betting slips to add this market to their selection and that is both costly and time consuming.
It is also much easier to add new betting markets to events at the last minute using a website than it is a betting shop. For example, a betting company may offer special odds for a player to score the first goal of the game and their team to win but when the team news is announced ahead of the game that player is not in the squad. By having a website, the bookmaker can quickly remove this offer and replace it with a different one including a player that is starting the match. So, most bookmakers are moving online because it offers them a greater range of flexibility when it comes to creating betting markets and offers.
Then we come to in-play betting and it is very difficult to offer this service without having a website which can be updated by the second.
Live betting is big business, especially in football and this is not something which can be easily offered in a betting shop. However, by moving online it is now very straight forward to provide live betting markets and almost every online bookmaker has a live betting service available to punters.
