The history of sport betting

The First Bookmaker
Betting is older than written history itself, people have been taking bets on anything they can think of since before money was even invented.

Most early wagers were crude, often with just two possible outcomes. One would bet on one side to win, such as the Roundheads to win the English civil war, and the other would bet on the alternative outcome, the Cavaliers to win.

Odds were rarely used and most wagers were effectively taken at ‘evens’. This is fine if you are predicting an evenly matched event but in life we know things are rarely even. This could be even worse if you were betting on a horse as quite often the bet choice was ‘Horse X to win’ vs ‘Horse X not to win’, hardly an even bet (in most cases).

Bookmakers on the other hand are people who lay actual odds creating a ‘book’ encompassing multiple scenarios or results, which, if balanced, will always ensure a profit. With this new type of business, rather than two people pitting their wits against each other over one possible outcome, a bookmaker will take multiple bets for several outcomes from different sources. If they have their prices right then this should always ensure a profit.[1]

Harry Ogden
The first bookmaker in the United Kingdom is considered to be Harry Ogden, who opened a business in the 1790s, although similar activities had existed in other forms earlier in the eighteenth century.

In 1961, Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government legalised betting shops, with tough measures enacted to ensure that bookmakers remained honest. A large industry has grown since. At one time, there were over 15,000 betting shops. Now, through consolidation, they have been reduced to between 9,100 and 9,200 in 2013.

The group of the largest bookmakers in the country, known as the “Big Three”, comprises William Hill, Ladbrokes, and Coral.

Improved TV coverage and the modernization of the law have allowed betting in shops and casinos in most countries. In the UK, on-track bookies still mark up the odds on boards beside the race course and use tic-tac or mobile telephones to communicate the odds between their staff and to other bookies, but, with the modernization of United Kingdom bookmaking laws, online and high street gambling are at an all-time high. A so-called super-casino had been planned for construction in Manchester, but the government announced that this plan had been scrapped on 26 February 2008.

Narine Zakharyan
Representative of Marketing Department аt IQ Soft

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