Sports Betting 101: How to Find a Good Betting Site

Posted on July 8, 2022 by SoccerPunter

Watching your favorite soccer or football matches is already a fun and thrilling activity. However, you can take your viewing experience to another level by placing bets on your favorite teams or simply on teams you think will win.

Soccer betting is popular with many sports fans and thanks to the internet, anyone of legal age can easily place their bets anytime and anywhere they are. There are now hundreds of sportsbooks where you can place your bets online like Bet365, and many more.

However, if you’re new to sports betting and you would like to know what makes a bookie a great choice, we’re here to cover all that for you. Here’s how you can spot a great sports betting site.

Sports Available

Not all sportsbooks offer odds on different sports, but if you’re mainly after betting on football or soccer, then you shouldn’t worry much about this.

After all, soccer is still the most popular sport worldwide. It will be ridiculous if a sportsbook has no odds on the biggest football matches like the English Premier League and the UEFA Champions League. Now, don’t just go for a bookie if they offer football odds. You may want to look at what other sports you can bet on too.

Eventually, there’s the off-season and you might want to place bets on other sports like cricket, basketball, or boxing. The bottom line is that you should always check if there is a variety of sports you can bet on.

Betting Odds Offered

Aside from what sports you can bet on when signing up for an online bookie, you should also take a look at the type and quality of odds they are offering. When it comes to the type of odds, it’s not just about odds on who will win or lose a match. See if there are other types of bets too like parlay or prop bets.

You might also want to check if a bookie offers live betting. While the traditional form of sports betting is fun, punters should, at some point, try live or in-game betting too. It simply adds more thrill and excitement to your betting experience.

The quality of odds should also be considered. Know that each bookie would offer different odds on one soccer match. If a bookie has better odds, it usually means that they are fair when it comes to the house edge. You should learn how bookies come up with betting odds to understand how this works.

But, whether you win or lose, a bookie will take a percentage of your bet. That percentage is the house edge.

Some bookies can be unfair about this and that’s why seasoned punters would shop for odds before they place any bet. The lower the house edge is, the better. Especially when you win your bet. It just means that your take-home is bigger.

Safety and Reputation

While it is generally safe to gamble online these days, you can never really be too careful when making online transactions. The best you can do is only deal with casinos and sportsbooks that are licensed. Most of the popular gambling sites these days carry a license from jurisdictions like Curacao, Isle of Man, Malta, Gibraltar, and the UK.

Licensed online casinos are regulated and randomly tested for fairness, so you can be sure that you are dealing with a legit and safe gambling operator.

Another thing that you can do is to check sports betting review sites. You can even go to sites like Reddit to read the experiences of other customers when placing bets on certain online sportsbooks. It’s simply a wise idea to do a bit of research on a betting site before joining any of them.

Banking Options

It all boils down to convenience when it comes to why more and more punters are now placing their bets online. A smooth betting experience is what you should be after and a big part of this is for the operator to make it easy for you to transact with them.

Thankfully, the most popular sportsbooks online now offer a variety of ways to deposit to your gambling account and request payouts.

Many punters still use their credit and debit cards today, but if you’re someone who’s not comfortable with that, go for sites that offer other options like the use of digital wallets like PayPal, Neteller, and Skrill, or cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum.