The origin of betting started with the farmers almost 2000 years ago, when they used to bet between each other for any kind of sport that is used to be organized between them. Greeks used to love gaming or sports and this led them to introduce the game of Olympics on this earth. They were the first to have organized different forms of betting in the athletic competitions. These bets were the first to have been recorded in the history of sports betting. Both the sports and the concept of betting were found to be very popular among the Greeks at that time. During those days, the concept of betting in sports was limited to the Greeks only.
The Romans started taking the concept of gaming and betting from the Greeks and gradually the concept of betting spread to Rome. The Romans started betting on their different gladiator games and gradually the concept became very popular in Italy. After sometime, the gladiator games stopped, but by that time, the concept of betting has spread to other nations of the world.
In the medieval ages, though some religious leaders made some laws forbidding betting, but it continued to be practised underground as various sporting events continued to be introduced. Betting was introduced in a larger sense when the British took it up in their horse racing. The concept of horse racing became very popular in the UK and along with it the British introduced the concept of betting on horse races. From UK, the concept of betting gradually spread to the USA, where gradually it became very popular as people started doing betting as one of their favourite past time event. The combined effect of USA and UK gradually made the concept of betting very popular in other countries as well.
During the time of industrial revolution, bookmakers came into existence in the field of horse betting and they started organizing the things in a much better way. A gentleman named John Moores founded a company named Littlewoods in the year 1923 for the purpose of offering football bets. Treble Chance was the most popular game where the player was allowed to predict from 10 to 15 football matches. Before football, betting also entered the pool table. Gradually it was found that from horse racing betting was entering the other areas of sports like pool and football. By the year 1980, Littlewoods became one of the largest private companies in the entire Europe.
Towards the last decade of the 20th century, betting sites which could operate online through Internet came into existence. In the year 1995, Intertops was one of the first sites which used to start online betting. They got permission from Barbuda and Antigua, two independent Commonwealth island countries. They also obtained license from Malta or Quebec for operating online betting sites.
The first popular online betting site Betfair was launched in the year 2000. Betfair initially refused to take customer bet and asked the customers to do the betting between them. In the meantime, more countries were allowing the Internet to enter and as a result, the Internet population was increasing in every part of the globe. In the year 2002, Betfair started taking live bets and it was considered to be a revolution in history of betting. With time, many reputed betting sites came into the market and reputed ones like internationalbetting.net created a name for self in the market. With the increase in popularity of online betting, people learnt determining odds and receiving and paying off bets on the outcome of sporting events.
Nowadays, many people can bet from the comfort of their home in a variety of sports which include football, basketball, baseball, boxing, car racing and cricket and what not.
