There are plenty of ways you can indulge in a little gambling online, but two of the most prominent methods are online casino gaming and sports betting. Both online casinos and sports betting sites are increasing in popularity, especially as many people found themselves unable or unwilling to leave the house this year.
If you’ve been thinking about getting into football betting this year – and why wouldn’t you, given what a packed slate the sport is going to enjoy in 2021 – then there are a few things you need to know first. The same is true of online casino gaming; it’s not as simple as “find a website, spend money”.
Here, we’ve outlined some of the pros and cons of playing online casino games and sports betting, so that you can decide whether you want to place a few wagers this year. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the pros and cons of online casino gaming and football betting.
Pro (both) – online platforms are widespread
There might be a number of reasons why you don’t want to leave your home when you feel like placing a bet. Thankfully, both online casino gaming and sports betting allow you to do so from the comfort of your living room, and you don’t need more than just your mobile device or your laptop.
When you’re looking for the best pokies online, you’ll be treated to a wealth of options, all of which are competing for your attention. That’s also true when you want to place a bet on the Premier League, for example, or guess where a player will be transferred during the upcoming transfer window; you’ll have plenty of choices of platform.
Pro (football betting) – knowledge comes in handy
This is one area where sports betting has the advantage over online casino play. When you’re betting on football, you can use your specialist knowledge of players and team status in order to help you achieve a more favourable outcome. Of course, it won’t guarantee a win, but knowledge is helpful.
Building a strategy for sports betting is paramount to making any kind of money while you bet. Your strategy could, for example, revolve around home field advantage for a certain team, or it could depend on a team’s star striker scoring a certain number of goals across an entire season. Online casino gaming is much harder to build a strategy around.
Pro (online casino gaming) – ease of use
Unlike sports betting, you won’t need any kind of specialist knowledge whatsoever to get involved in online casino gaming. Most online casino games are incredibly simple to understand and won’t require much time investment to learn; slots, for example, are as simple as pulling a virtual lever, while blackjack just depends on getting the right cards.
Of course, you can place bets on sports without much specialist knowledge, but you’ll find that your longer-term strategy suffers as a result of not being immersed in that sport. By contrast, online casino gaming is arguably more welcoming and universal because anyone can enjoy it.
Con (both) – they heavily rely on luck
Whether or not you view this as a con is dependent on your outlook, but it’s undeniable that both online casino gaming and football betting depend on luck to a large degree. Great poker players are observational masters, but this element disappears in online casino gaming, so everything is reduced to pure mathematics and probability.
The same is ultimately true of sports betting as well. While you can use your knowledge to try and predict certain outcomes or moment-to-moment events, the fact remains that you don’t have any direct influence over who wins or loses, so in the end, sports betting is still gambling.
Con (football betting) – better bets are harder to spot
Online casino gaming arguably enjoys a level playing field, because everything revolves around pure chance. Sports betting, however, does involve making predictions and picks, so it stands to reason that longer odds will pay better. That does mean you’re taking a risk, though, and it also means you need to be extra-observant to spot higher-paying bets.
This means you’ll need to pay extra-close attention to league tables and tournament fixtures. You might not want to limit yourself to just betting on the Premier League; branching out to other ventures like La Liga or Bundesliga will help you to diversify your betting portfolio. However, learning everything you need to learn in order to take advantage of the best bets can be incredibly time-consuming.
Con (online casino gaming) – all games are largely created equal
On an online casino platform, every game you play can be boiled down essentially to “did you pick the right option”. While the visuals and aesthetics of each game will, of course, differ greatly from one another, the fact that you’re not playing in a physical environment does remove many of the key differences.
In the end, this means that each game you’re playing is a simple variation on a core theme. This might not bother you too much; after all, the same could be said of many video games, and they still manage to entertain. Still, if what you like is the hustle and strategy of a physical poker game or a physical roulette table, online casino gaming simply can’t provide that, and the chances are that unless more realistic simulations are built, it never will.