Placing money on the result of a sporting event is called sports betting. While many people regard betting as high interest in a sport, those who oppose the practice do so because they feel it threatens the basic honor of the sport.

Betting on sports activities may be officially permitted in some countries. In North America, it is generally forbidden. On the other hand, in Europe, bookmaking, the profession of accepting sports bets, is legally accepted.

Betting on sport requires both skill and homework. An experienced person will gather and analyze as much information about a game as possible. He will consider the probabilities of each team winning and compare this with the opinion of the bookmaker before placing a bet. Sound judgment and luck are both required to be successful. To be consistently successful means you need to put in enough time and effort to study all aspects of the sport.

There are different types of bets ranging from the simple wager where you bet against a friend on whose favorite basketball team will win, to going to a bookmaker to make a wager on the outcome of a major sporting event like the Super Bowl.

The two types of wagers offered by bookmakers are a straight-up or money line bet, or a point spread wager. Odds on games like hockey, baseball, soccer and boxing use money lines or straight-up prices. The point spread is used in sports such as basketball and American football.

Other kinds of bets include "proposition bets" that are made on a very specific outcome of a match, like guessing the number of goals each team scores in a soccer match; "parlays" that involve multiple bets and rewards successful bettors with a large payout; and "future wagers" that predict a future accomplishment by a team or player.

There are official sports bookmakers throughout the world, and where betting is illegal it is often done online.