Although there are countries where we can find a great tradition of sports betting in society, with a healthy perception of it as nothing more than a leisure option for adults, there are other countries and regions where sports betting is seen as a problem to be eradicated. Although even in these countries, the perception has changed in recent years, with a great evolution of the sector that has made people perceive sports betting as something less dangerous for society and as something acceptable for most adults.
Regulations have their positive side
Despite the fact that regulations, especially those that are stronger and more restrictive for players and bookmakers, are generally seen by the companies in the sector as a threat, it is true that they also have some positive aspects. In the case of society’s perception of sports betting is something in which increasing regulation helps since society sees how bookmakers can not do absolutely whatever they want and are subject to rules set by the governments of each of the regulated markets that we can find in the world. In any case, these regulations, which are very different from one country to another, always provide us with greater security and control over the bookmakers that offer their services in a country. This makes us safer and more confident in the companies that offer sports betting services.
Even societies that are tougher on bookmakers and casinos are slowly changing their minds about online gambling. In countries like Japan, where we have to go to international bookmakers or casinos because gambling is banned in the country and there can be no Japanese companies offering these services, the debate is starting from some sectors of the population and the country’s politics about allowing gambling in the country by applying a new regulation that controls it as much as possible. Although gambling is illegal in the country, we can see that many gambling and casino sites offer their services to Japanese players. We have websites that talk about it so that Japanese people can easily find a bookmaker or casino that has the platform in their language and accepts the local currency. These types of sites exist for all languages, especially in English, but in less widely spoken languages such as Japanese, it is more difficult to find reliable sites. Even so, it is always a good idea to check the information you can obtain with other sources on the Internet.
Increased sports following
According to many people, sports betting increases the following of leagues that, without betting, would not have the same volume of people interested in them. This is the case, for example, of the European minor leagues. In Europe, almost all the attention is focused on the country’s top soccer leagues, but with sports betting, there are many more people who follow the matches of more competitions than the country’s main league. Also, some of the top categories of European countries that have a lower level than the main European leagues increase their following thanks to the possibility of placing sports bets on these matches.
For all this, we can say that sports betting is experiencing an evolution in society, where it fits better and better, and more and more people enjoy in a healthy way an occasional bet on a match of their favorite sport. And according to some studies conducted in regulated environments, the percentage of players with gambling addiction problems is really low, so there is no great reason to worry. After all, anyone who wants to gamble in an uncontrolled manner can do so even if the country where they live has strong regulations since there are very simple methods for playing in gambling houses and casinos in countries other than your own, such as a simple VPN.
Businesses around betting
While sports betting is a business for bookmakers who offer their platforms to players to place their bets, in recent years, other businesses around sports betting are growing to complement it. Some of these businesses that deserve to be mentioned are the sports tipsters who make forecasts that they share with their followers in exchange for a monthly payment for access to their services. Although there have been some scandals in the past where some tipsters were accused of making their followers lose money to make more money themselves, by having an agreement with the bookmakers where the tipster would get a percentage of the losses of the players that he would take to the bookmaker in question, the truth is that most of them work with impeccable ethics, trying at all times to offer the maximum possible profit to their clients. Obviously, bets fail because it is impossible to bet and win all the time, but if you find a good tipster, it is normal that most of the months of the year are positive, obtaining certain annual profits that even allow many people to dedicate themselves professionally to sports betting as their main source of income. However, this is more difficult in regulated markets for a number of reasons, such as the possibility of the bookmaker limiting the amounts to bet in case of detecting that you are a winner. Despite being in heavily regulated markets, there are countries where this is a very frequent practice, such as Spain.
Another business that has appeared around the bookmakers is the statistics tools that offer the data of the different sports so that s can decide who to bet on based on the statistics and without the need to know the sport in depth. However, it should be noted that it is extremely difficult to make money in the long run in sports betting if you simply rely on statistics. But even for professional tipsters who have a deep knowledge of the sport they predict and advise their s on, it is a very good help to have this kind of statistics that sometimes is not so easy to obtain otherwise. For example, for specific markets, such as cards or corners in a soccer match, having exact statistics of the previous results in these markets of one or the other team helps us to the reasoning of a forecast.