Betting on sports is based upon a spread, which is essentially a range of all possible outcomes. The bet made by the gambler is whether the outcome will be above or below the stated spread. Betting on sports has become quite popular over the last several years in the United Kingdom, with almost one million people now taking advantage of this style of gambling. This is due mainly to the high risk, high reward type of betting that betting on sports offers, with potential wins and losses greatly exceeding the original amount of money being wagered.
As an example, let us look at a typical sporting event. In most cases of sport betting, each game has an underdog and a favourite, or a team that is expected to lose and one that is expected to win, respectively. If the outcome were on a simple win/lose basis, then almost everyone would bet on the favourite, as this is a much safer bet, with only people who were willing to risk more betting on the underdog. The goal of betting on sports is to create an equal playing field for both sides of the wager, essentially trying to create a handicap for the underdog, and in turn giving both sides of a bet a roughly fifty/fifty chance of winning.
The way this is accomplished is by creating a point margin by which the favourite must win a given game. Suppose that a bookmaker creates a spread for a basketball game in which the favourite must win by at least fourteen points. This means that if one bets on the favourite, that team must win by more than fourteen points in order to win the bet. If the team wins, but by less than fourteen points, the bet is lost. Conversely, if one bets on the underdog and the team loses by less than fourteen points (or even wins), then the bet is won, but if they are defeated by more than fourteen points, the bet is lost.
Many bookmakers will create betting on sports systems of one-half points, in order to eliminate the event of a push. A push is when a team wins by the exact point margin. In the previous case, if the favourite won by exactly fourteen points, the bet would be a push and no money would be won or lost. By making the point margin fourteen and a half points, the bookmaker creates a spread in which if the favourite team wins by fourteen points or less, bets on the favourite are lost, and if they win by fifteen points or more, bets on the favourite are won. This eliminates the possibility of games ending without any bets being paid out.
