What is Sports Betting

Sports betting is a popular activity in the sporting world, which follows the great passion of sports fans and the competitors they support. Placing a bet on a sports event encourages sports fans to prove their knowledge of their favourite sports and to show their loyalty to a team or competitor.

A sports event is a game, match, race, or similar competitive event. At Jabula Bets, we cover thousands of sports fixtures that you can place bets on. Whether you are a football fundi, a basketball big shot, or a rugby rumbler, we know that you will find your favourite sports events on our Sport page.

A fixture is a sports event that has been scheduled as part of a tournament. Let's look at an example fixture.

• Region: Nigeria
• Tournament: Nigeria Premier League
  
• Date & Time: Today - 17:00
  
• Home Team (1): Rivers United FC
• Away Team (2): Niger Tornadoes FC

A betting market is a type of bet that you can place on a sports fixture. Different sports fixtures can even have different markets, depending on the sport, region, tournament, and more.

You will find that Jabula Bets offers a wide variety of sports betting markets with great betting value.

For example, a popular betting market is Match Result, where you choose which team or competitor wins at the end of the event, or if the event will end in a draw, not including extra time.

A market outcome is a choice you can bet on within a betting market. The outcome you choose to bet on should be something that you think will happen during the sports fixture, because if it does, your bet will be a winning bet.

Let's look at an example of a Match Result market for a football fixture.

The outcomes you can choose in this market are:

• 1 (Home Team Wins)
• X (Draw)
• 2 (Away Team Wins)
  

When you see a lock icon under an outcome, this means that you can not place a bet on that outcome.

The price of an outcome, also known as odds, is a number that will be used to calculate the amount you can win if you place a winning bet on that outcome. This number also lets you know what the chances of that outcome happening are expected to be.

Let's look at that example Match Result market again.

• 1 (Home Team Wins): 2.15
• X (Draw): 2.70
• 2 (Away Team Wins): 1.10
  
  As you can see, 2 (Away Team Wins) is the outcome with the lowest price. This tells us that the Away Team is the favourite to win, according to other punters. We also see that the outcome with the highest price is X (Draw). This tells us that the event is not expected to end in a draw, even if the favourite does not win.
  
  It's true that prices can tell you which outcomes are expected to happen and which outcomes are not, but a punter should trust their own judgement when placing a bet. Even if an outcome is expected to happen, there is no guarantee that it will happen. Knowing the sports, competitors, and markets that you are placing bets on is key to making more winning bets.

Prices can also change while the bet market is available, but when you place a bet on an outcome, the current price of that outcome is locked in with your bet ticket until the sports event is resulted.

A green line or dot means that the price has increased. A red line or dot means that the price has decreased.

When you have chosen the markets and outcomes you want to bet on, the betslip is the tool you will use to submit your bets. We will learn more about the betslip in another article, but for now, let's look at an example football bet on our betslip.

In the example betslip, we want to talk about: 

• Market: Match Result
• Selection (Outcome): Southampton
• Price: 3.00
  
• Total Stake: 25.00
• Possible Winnings: 100.00

The stake of your bet is the amount of funds that you are investing in your bet. In the example bet, we have decided to invest a R25 stake in the outcome that Southampton will win the match.

• (stake x price) + stake = winnings

• First we multiply stake by price to find winnings: 25 x 3 = 75
• Then we add stake to winnings to find payout: 75 + 25 = 100
• Note that free bets normally do not pay out the stake, because the stake you are paying is zero

• A sports event is a game, match, race, or similar competitive event.
• A fixture is a sports event that has been scheduled as part of a tournament.
  
• A betting market is a type of bet that you can place on a sports fixture.
  
• A market outcome is a choice you can bet on within a betting market.
  
• The price of an outcome, also known as odds, is a number that will be used to calculate the amount you can win if you place a winning bet on that outcome.
  
• The betslip is the tool you will use to place your bets.
• The stake of your bet is the amount of funds that you are investing in your bet.
  
• Winnings are the reward you receive when you have placed a winning bet.
  

Now that you know a bit more about sports betting with Jabula Bets, we hope that you can go forward with confidence and take the next step to placing your first sports bet on our Sport page!