Sports Betting vs. Casino Gameplay – How Should You Spend Your Cash?
Posted by Harry Kane on Thursday, May 14, 2020
In the year ending March 2019, it was estimated that the online casino GGY for the UK was a whopping £5.3 billion. While this sum may have decreased nominally in the previous six months, there’s no doubt that online gambling continues to represent huge business on these shores.
Unsurprisingly, casino products (including online poker) dominated this yield, accounting for 56% of the overall take. Conversely, sports betting accounted for 37.1%, highlighting a relatively large gap between these two entities.
But which market niche offers the best potential returns, and where should you spend your money as a player? Here are some tips to keep in mind:
1. How Big Is Your Bankroll?
Let’s start with the basics; as before anything else you need to calculate the size of your bankroll and understand how this can best be deployed in the pursuit of online wins.
Remember, this should always bet an amount of capital that you can comfortably afford to lose, as otherwise you run the risk of incurring significant debt and being tempted to chase larger losses.
The size of your bankroll should definitely influence how you spend your cash, and it’s fair to say that casino gaming and sports betting aren’t equal in this respect.
For example, sports betting can offer as few or as many variables as you want, depending on the market that you wager on. So, if you want to place a single spread bet on the outcome of a football match, you’ll effectively have around a 33% chance of winning.
This is not the case in some casino games, where there are numerous variables to keep in mind before wagering. In the case of roulette, for example, there are a variety of alternate bets that you can place, each of which have variable odds and alter the prevailing house edge accordingly.
It’s also fair to surmise that the spinning roulette wheel can produce a huge number of outcomes, with 36 available numbers and two alternate colours in red and black.
These variables combine to create a more challenging proposition for punters, and one that makes it difficult to strategise, leverage their existing bankroll and ultimately achieve a return on their spend. It also means that you may have to spend more to cover a viable number of betting options, reducing the value proposition significantly over time.
Of course, slot games buck this trend as they tend to offer numerous winning combinations, without requiring punters to deploy strategy or make informed betting selections. You can also access slots that offer a return-to-player (RTP) rate in excess of 97%, which means that you’ll recoup £0.97 for every £1 spent on average.
However, it’s fair to say that all casino games are governed by a strong element of chance, whereas sports betting is more favourable for those with knowledge, insight and a willingness to learn.
2. Do You Have An Existing Knowledge Base?
There’s no doubt that knowledge can be a great tool in the quest to unlock sports betting prizes, whereas this has a considerably lower stock in the casino gaming niche.
While it’s easy to learn how casino games work, for example, there’s little you can do to eliminate the opportunistic outcome of gambling activities. You can’t even try to identify patterns in a series of results and outcomes, as the numbers produced online are entirely random and governed by random number generator (RNG) software.
Of course, it’s this element of chance that appeals to so many players, but it’s far from ideal for those with a pragmatic outlook who may be looking to optimise their returns.
The same cannot be said for sports betting, where the outcomes of specific matches and tournaments are often dictated by the skill or ability of participants. If Liverpool were hosting League Two Leyton Orient, for example, they’d be the overwhelming favourites, creating a competitive advantage for those with knowledge of the sport and the competing teams.
The potential downside here is that the odds of Liverpool winning would be incredibly short, meaning that it would be very hard to achieve a viable return on even a large stake. If they were priced at 1/15, for example, this means that a £30 stake would only deliver a £2 return in the event of a home win.
However, you can negate this by using even more detailed knowledge and leveraging the handicap betting market.
Through this, you can apply a handicap to Liverpool in the form of goals against, lengthening the odds in your favour without overly compromising the favourite’s chances of winning.
If we use the same example of Liverpool playing Leyton Orient, you could apply a -2 goal handicap against the Reds. This way, your wager would come in if Liverpool won by three goals or more (which is still incredibly likely in this instance), but the odds would improve markedly.
Clearly, a broad depth of knowledge can help to empower sports bettors, whereas this is less effective in the world of casino gameplay.
3. Your Appetite for Risk and Gambling Psychology
In the case of sports betting, the overall size of your win is almost always dictated by the initial stake. This trend varies for four, five or six-fold accumulators (or larger), but while these can offer huge returns on a small stake, they’re incredibly difficult to win.
While the same rule is true in casino gaming to a degree, this niche also makes it possible to secure huge, seven-figure wins that are disproportionately larger than your original stake.
Once again, slots offer a prime example of this, particular high-variance games or those that offer progressive jackpots.
Although these games let you tailor your stake according to your coin size and the number of paylines that you activate (which impacts on the size of base game wins), the size of lucrative winning combinations and the final jackpot are far in excess of the maximum bet.
So, if you have a large appetite for risk, a viable bankroll and are in the market to win huge returns on your gambling spend, then iGaming may offer considerably more value than sports betting.