It was not that long ago that betting shop operators in the UK were raking in the cash, thanks in no small part to the four fixed odds betting terminals, often simply referred to as FOBT’s that were permitted to operate in each venue.
Those machines offered a range of different casino styled games, on which gamblers could place wagers as high as £100 per game, which could be a spin of a Roulette wheel or on a single hand of cards, they could also play high stake slot machines on those terminals too.
However, when the UK Gambling Commission decided those stake levels were too high, they set about bringing in legislation to lower the maximum stake levels down to a much more modest £2 per game played.
That had the immediate effect of massively reducing the income levels and subsequently the profit generated by those machines, and some operators decided to close down many of their betting shops, as without the income from those FOBT’s those shops were no longer profitable.
So, faced with a decimation of their profits, they quickly reverted to courting those customers they had somewhat been neglecting whilst the good times rolled with that income they generated via those gaming machines.
Those customers were of course their horse racing punters, and quick as a flash bookies across the UK started to court them once again, by launching a range of special promotional offers, in an attempt to get those customers to return to their betting offices.
It was however something of a fruitless task, for having been neglected for years many of those horse race backers had moved their gaming action over to the many sister sites of online casinos which offered their own unique sports book and betting sites.
In fact, thanks to the advent of what are known as betting exchanges, punters can now cut out the bookie altogether, by placing bets amongst themselves via a peer-to-peer designed betting platform.
The upshot of allowing punters to not only place bets but lay bets with their fellow punters, is that the odds available on those betting exchanges are often way higher than the odds a traditional bookmaker can offer.
No sane and savvy gambler is going to take odds of let’s say even money about a horse they fancy winning a race, when all they have to do is to sign up and place their bets on a betting exchange, and by doing so they could quite easily acquire odds on their horse of 6/4 or even higher.
In fact one of the main advantages of those peer-to-peer betting platforms is that a punter can ask for any odds they want, and if there is another user willing to give them those higher odds then the platform matches them up to each other.
The betting exchange operator does of course take a small commission, but it is only charged to winning bets, so if you opt to lay odds on a horse for example, and it wins a race, whilst you end up paying out to the person who took your odds, they, not you have to pay the house a small commission on their winnings.
It is not only horse races that punters can bet on or lay bets on, a huge and very diverse range of other sports betting opportunities are available on those exchanges too.
