Information makes the Sports Wagering World go Round

Twenty years ago, regional punters bet on regional events. They did so retail sports wagering facilities, and checked their local newspaper the following day for results. The world just doesn’t work that way anymore, as the wealth of information now available is driving the online bookmaker’s market ever skyward.

While it’s the technology that gives birth to such vast shifts in modern day society, the applause must go to the girth of information we now have access to. It is information that makes the world go round. Technology is just the catalyst that brings us together.

Sports Wagering Expansion via Information

When technology brought us closer to the information we need to bet on sports, the activity went from local to global practically overnight. Online bookies set up internet operations that gave us access to more wagers from all over the world.

I can have a punt on the Melbourne Cup, just as easily as an American baseball game, Canadian hockey match, an English rowing competition, or an arctic sled dog race. The world wide web has delivered so much information into our homes, there are no longer any boundaries to what we can do.

In the mid to late 1990’s, following the footsteps of the wildly successful Bodog Sport (1994 est.) platform, a number of well established land-based sports wagering companies took to the internet to expand their services. Not everyone was keen on the idea of moving money over the web at that time, but the industry thrived nonetheless.

Soon enough, heightened security measures were invoked and reliable payment processors sprang up across the globe to facilitate those payments. The ability to wager on any sports, any time, continued to expand, as well. It wasn’t just athletic contests on the menu anymore. Punters could drop a note on everything from political futures, to reality TV, to How Harry Met Sally.

Okay, maybe not that last one, but you get the idea. If there are feasible odds to be set on anything, sports wagering sites now offer them. But to make that happen, bookmakers needed more information, and that opened up a whole other side-line industry.

Information Drives Odds Aggregation

Before we can place a bet on anything, odds aggregators have to analyze it. Experts have to look at every potential event, examine the statistics and probabilities, and come up with odds that will appeal to bookies, as well as punters.

Information hasn’t just spread the field for bookies, though. It’s also given us sports wagering fans a new avenue for investigating the odds and making the best picks.

Rise of Pro Punters

Gone are the days of betting on our favorite teams, just because we can. Now, we have the same access to information that odds aggregators do, and if we perform due diligence, we can turn an old fashioned hobby into a professional career.

Pro gamblers have always existed. Back in the 1980’s – before the world wide web ever came along – people like Alan Woods used computers to pore over all sorts of information to beat the horse racing industry at its own game. Today, not only do we have computers and hand-held mobile devices in every home, we have the internet to provide us with all the information we could possibly want.

To become successful at sports wagering, all we have to do is set aside enough time to gather that information and work the odds. There’s always a risk. It is still gambling after all. But there are a lot more successful pros on the planet than there were before we gained limitless access to earth’s most valuable resource – information.