Sports betting is a big business these days, with apps and online betting sites making it easier than ever to place a wager on the latest football game or horse racing event. But the terminology for betting often gets interchanged with gambling, despite there being a difference between the two. The key difference between gambling and betting is that with gambling, the wager is placed on an event without any understanding or basis for the outcome, while betting takes the expected performance of an event into consideration. But there are other subtle variants between these two seemingly identical activities.
What is Gambling?
With gambling, there’s often the notion of earning lots of cash with a lucky outcome. It’s the excitement of not knowing what that outcome might be that often makes it so addictive. But there are subtle differences between gambling and betting, even if they seem like the same thing on the surface. Gambling is placing a wager on an outcome, but better is more of an agreement between two parties on predictions – for example, between a punter and a bookmaker on whether one team wins or loses. Gambling has an inherent excitement associated with it but there are also risks, as everything is down to luck. Gambling doesn’t have anything to do with human skill and everything to do with chance. If you need help with betting there are tones of online guides and books willing to help you.
What is Betting?
Although betting is a form of gambling, it has less risk associated with it as there is slightly less uncertainty. While betting does have the risk of loss, those risks are on a smaller scale. Betting is based on predicting the outcome by assessing the situation and trying to determine what the result might be based on research or previous outcomes. With betting, there is the opportunity to involve some level of skill although obviously the actual result can’t be guaranteed. Betting is now a highly commercialized activity and a thriving industry, with offers and promotions provided by betting companies all the time to entice people into placing their bets with them instead of a competitor.
The Key Differences
Betting is a word that is used to refer to legal activity, while gambling is often used to refer to illegal activities or looked down upon in many parts of the world. Also, gambling is a generic term while betting refers to a structured agreement between two parties that is a validated activity – gambling is regulated in a very different way than betting. Because of online arenas making gambling more accessible, it’s gained massive popularity recent years. There’s more innovation and variety with gambling games than there is with betting, which is more structured and traditional because of the way in which betting agreements take place. More and more people are becoming interested in gambling, whether it’s internet games, roulette or poker, while sports betting such as football, horse racing, tennis or golf is more popular for the betting aspect of this activity.
