Why Do People Love Sports Betting?
There are two main reasons why people love sports betting. The first is that it makes it possible to
turn predictions into profits. Most sports fans like to say what they think will happen in a particular event, and betting on those predictions means that they can also make money when they are proven right. The other reason why sports betting is so popular is that having a stake riding on it
makes watching an event even more exciting, even if it's just a small amount. If you find watching your favourite NHL team win a game, winning some cash on top of it will make it even more exciting!
The opportunity to make money by skillfully predicting the outcome of an event does not come along just once in a while. There are thousands of sporting events taking place at any given time around the world, and online bookmakers make it possible for you to bet on a huge number of them. For example, if you're a fan of soccer, you aren't limited to betting on Canadian Soccer League games. You can also bet on soccer games taking place in other countries. Want to have a bet on Manchester United winning the English Premier League? Doing that is just as easy as betting on a local game.
Online sports betting in Canada
It has been legal to place parlay bets involving multiple events for years in Canadian casinos. The sole exception to the ban on single-event betting was on horse racing. Still, with Bill C-218, a new sports betting legislation, passing the Senate,
Canadian online and land-based casinos will be able to offer Las-Vegas style betting across all sports.
This is the third time a law similar to this was proposed in Canada in the past decade, but it's the first time all parties have supported it.
The change has been welcomed by the CFL and the NHL, amongst other professional sports leagues. Whether every province and territory will take advantage of this online sports betting law relaxation is remains to be seen. Still, the legislation has certainly made the way clear for online sports betting to become big business in the coming years and decades.
Betting with a regulated gambling site is always the safest option for customers as these
online casinos are tightly regulated to ensure that they operate fairly and transparently. They also have to meet very high standards in the areas of safety and security. This is important because betting involves handing your cash over to the sportsbook, and you need to be confident that they will hand it back - and more besides - if and when you win. Proper licensing and regulation is the key to bettors having that confidence.
Being able to place bets online without worry is a simple matter of choosing an online sportsbook with a gambling license. There are already several options, and it is expected that the number of online sportsbooks open to Canadian players will explode over the next few years.
Most Popular Sports Betting Markets
When you sign up with an online sportsbook in Canada you will be giving yourself multiple ways of placing bets. The six that you are most likely to come across are as follows:
Moneyline
The moneyline market is perhaps the most straightforward of all. This will allow you to bet on the outcome of a single sporting event, and all you have to do is predict which team or competitor will win. Take a look at this example:
Example:
Odds are shown here in American format. When odds are shown with a + sign, they tell you how much profit you would get from a $100 bet. When odds are shown with a - sign, they tell you how much you would need to bet to make a profit of $100. In this example, bet $100 on Team A, and if you're right, you'd make a profit of $170. If you wanted to make a profit of $100 on Team B, you'd need to bet $225.
Point Spread
A point spread bet requires you to make two predictions. The first is about the outcome of the event in question, and the second is about the size of the winning margin. Here the sportsbook will form its own opinion and then offer odds for the favourite with a handicap and for the underdog with an advantage. Consider the example below:
Team C
| +6.5 |
-110 |
| Under -110 |
-110 |
Team D
| -6.5 |
-110 |
| Under -110 |
-110 |
Here the sportsbook thinks that Team D is likely to win, so they have given them a handicap of -6.5. That means the team would need to win by 7 points or more for your bet to win. If you bet on Team C, they would have an advantage of +6.5, so they either need to win by any margin or lose by 6 points or less for your bet to succeed.
Totals
Also known as the Over/Under, the Totals bet asks you to predict whether the total number of points or goals will be Over or Under a stated value.
Example:
| Over 51.5 |
-110 |
| Under 51.5 |
-110 |
Remember, what you are predicting here is not the number of points or goals that will be scored by a particular team but by both teams combined. Bet Over 51.5, and the game would need 52 points or more for the bet to win. Bet Under 51.5, and the game would need 51 points or less in total for the bet to win.
Prop Betting
Prop bets don't concern the overall outcome of the event, but something that could happen in the event or in relation to the event. For example, you could bet on whether or not a particular player will score a home run in a baseball game, or on how much overtime there will be (if any) in a basketball game.
Parlay Betting
Canadians have been able to place parlay bets for years. This is a bet that requires you to predict the outcome of several different events, and the bet only wins if all of those events result as predicted. Parlay betting can give you some fantastic profits when you succeed, but correctly predicting multiple results is quite a challenge, so you won't succeed nearly as often as you might when betting on single events.
In-Play Betting
Another popular type of betting that you will be able to participate in is in-play betting. This is where you bet on an event as it is being played. In-play betting allows you to react to how a game is unfolding and can be used to hedge against potential losses as well as potentially increase potential profits.
You can bet on NFL, CFL or NCAA football games at every sportsbook website
Popular sports to bet on in Canada
Now that you have seen the kind of bets that you can place when sports betting online, it is probably a good idea to give you an overview of the various sports you can bet on. There are probably hundreds if you bet with a large international sportsbook - everything from Aikido and Biathlon to Yachting and Zorb - but the most popular sports are as follows:
Ice Hockey
One of Canada's all-time favourite sports is ice hockey, and you'll find plenty of games covered at any reputable sportsbook. Whether you want to bet on Canadian Hockey League games, National Hockey League games, or on games being played on an entirely different continent, you won't have any trouble finding markets.
NHL betting markets are numerous as you can bet on the individual games, but you will also be able to predict which team will win the league, which teams will make the playoffs, and which team will win the coveted Stanley Cup.
Betting on football
Football is always a popular sport to bet on. It doesn't matter if you're a fan of the Canadian or American league - you'll have multiple opportunities to turn your football picks into profits with any decent online sports betting sites. The NFL is slightly better catered for than the CFL at sportsbooks based in the US, but the CFL isn't overlooked, so if you want to bet on the Blue Bombers or the Argonauts, you'll have plenty of chances to do just that.
When it comes to the
NFL betting, you will be able to bet on anything: the draft, pre-season games, winners of the divisions and conferences and you'll have more
Super Bowl betting options to choose from than you're ever likely to need.
You can place your golf bets before the tournament or bet live while the action unfolds!
Basketball
Basketball might be synonymous with the NBA, but the sport is played worldwide. Online sportsbooks will give you the option of betting on all of the big games taking place in the US, Canada, Europe and Japan. You can bet on the outcome of individual games, the total number of points scored and the margin of victory. You have countless
NBA betting options available, including how a particular player will fare in a certain game or which teams make the playoffs.
Betting before the game is great, but if you are watching the game anyway, you might as well take advantage of the Live Betting options available in basketball - bet on the results of each quarter or the race to 30 points, or if the final score will be odd or even!
Baseball
Canada might only have one team in the Major League, but you don't need us to tell you that the sport is far more popular here than that particular stat suggests. We also have our own thriving Canadian baseball scene, and if you want to bet on your favourite team, you won't find it much of a challenge to do so online. You can, of course,
bet on MLB games too, so you won't need to choose between having your cake and eating it. Just focus on making good picks and help yourself to the odds that are available.
Golf
Betting on golf makes every Masters, PGA tour, our European tour day even more exciting.
Golf tournaments aren't quite as numerous as football, basketball, or hockey games, but there are still plenty of
golf betting opportunities to look at each year.
You will obviously be able to try and predict the winner of big tournaments such as the US Open or the Masters, but if that is too much of a challenge, you'll also be able to bet on who will make the cut or finish in the top ten on the leaderboard. There are also Two Ball and Three Ball markets where you only have to predict which of two or three golfers will have the best round.
The great thing about golf betting is that you can start placing tournament bets or future bets days before the event begins and get great odds on who will win the tournament. You can place odds for each day, and you can bet live as well if you feel Fortuna is siding with someone you didn't think of when the day began.
Tennis
Tennis is a fantastic sport for betting. Each tennis match has only two possible outcomes and two players, so you only have to assess the chances of two players instead of figuring out each player's form on a football team. All sportsbooks will let you bet on the big events no matter where they take place, so you'll be able to bet on everything from the US Open to the Australian Open and the Wimbledon Championships. If you fancy a player to win a tournament, you'll be able to bet them to win outright, or you could bet on them match-by-match, making a profit on each for as long as they remain unbeaten.
Soccer
Those of you who enjoy soccer will be able to bet on a wide range of games and leagues around the world. Whether you're a fan of the domestic soccer scene here in Canada, Major League Soccer, the English Premier League, or even the German Bundesliga, you'll have more than enough matches to bet on. As well as betting on the outcome of tournaments and individual matches, you'll also be able to place any number of prop bets. In other words, if you want to bet on the first team to score, the number of red cards that will be awarded, or the final score of the game, you'll have multiple chances to do so.
You can bet on the horses at the races or in any of the online betting sites
Horse Racing
The recent legislation that now allows betting on single sporting events doesn't extend to horse racing, but if you enjoy betting on thoroughbreds, you can do that online, too. As we said earlier, parlays can be placed at online sportsbooks just as easily as any other type of bet, so if you think you can pick the winner or placed horses in several races, you'll have ample opportunity to prove it.
Betting on boxing and UFC
Boxing is living its renaissance now, so boxing betting and the increasingly popular
UFC betting gives you some very exciting betting options. Many bookies are running
amazing promotions on fight nights, so always make sure to check out what they have on offer if you are looking for a deal. And with champions in a place like Anthony Joshua, Tyson Fury, Canelo, Chris Eubank JR, Lomachenko or Manny Pacquiao, we can expect quite a few great matches next few years.
You can bet on the horses at the races or in any of the online betting sites
Working with Non-American Odds
Many sportsbooks in Canada and the US present sports betting odds in American format, as mentioned earlier when we discussed the Moneyline market. However, some sportsbooks, particularly those based in Europe, may also present odds in fractional and/or decimal form, so here we will briefly explain how they work.
Fractional odds show you how much profit you will make compared with how much you bet. The figure on the left-hand side represents profit, and the figure on the right-hand side represents the stake required. If the odds were 3/1, you would make a profit of $30 for every $10 that you bet. Similarly, if the odds were 8/11, you would make a profit of $8 for every $11 that you bet. Of course, you would also get your stake back.
Decimal odds include the returned stake and therefore tell you the whole return for every $1 bet. Decimal odds of 4.0 would consequently give you a return of $40 for a bet of $10, giving you a profit of $30. Decimal odds of 3.5 would give you a return of $35 for a bet of $10, give you a profit of $25.
What about the regulation?
Under Canadian law, gamblers who win on sports betting sites or on sports betting apps are not required to pay any taxes. However, the requirement that people whose primary source of income is gambling declare their income makes this a grey area.
Sports Betting
Open for Canadian players
