Sports betting is a multi-billion dollar global industry. There are two main reasons for this.

One is the extreme popularity of sport in itself, with literally hundreds of millions of people across the world following their favourite sport, whether their passion is football, tennis, cricket, Formula One, or any other of the host of games and sports played. It is a natural progression for many of them to extend their love of a sport to betting on it.

The second reason is that, at the entry level at least, it is easy and requires limited knowledge to take part; you can place a bet and still win.

But although there are different ways in which to bet on sports, research has shown that the best chance of success when it comes to betting is to concentrate on one sport only, rather than spread your gambling activity across a number of them. But which sport should you choose and how to bet on sports?

In terms of a beginners guide to sports betting, here are a few simple tips.

First, it is always advisable to choose a sport in which you are already interested and have some basic knowledge of anyway. One of the most important rules when it comes to any form of betting on sports is the need to do some homework before making any bet. You may need to research players, teams pitch conditions, weather, circuits, first serves or a myriad of other details depending on which sport you follow. That is more than enough to take in without having to understand the fundamentals of a sport, and its rules as well. So, while baseball may seem like an attractive sport on which to bet, if you do not regularly follow it, stay away when it comes to betting.

The other important rule is to choose a sport where the success percentage is greater than the odds on which you are betting. It is simple to calculate this.

The success percentage represents the number of correct assumptions, expressed as a percentage of the total number of predictions. Thus, if you make 20 bets, and 10 are winners, then the success percentage is 50%.

It is important to understand the odds which are being quoted for a particular outcome, and the conventions used in sports betting. A decimal quota is inversely proportionate to the probability of an event occurring, so if odds are expressed as 1.6, this equates to a 62.5% probability (100/1.6).

In this case, this is not a good sport on which to bet because the odds on success – 62.5% are greater than our success percentage, so the probability is that you will lose money.

This can be illustrated as follows.

If the percentage of success is 70% or above – out of 10 bets, seven or more are winners – and the odds are 1.5 (i.e. 66%), then players will, on average make money. Similarly, if the success percentage is 60% and the odds are 2.2 (i.e. 45%) then again, players, will be successful on average.

However, if the percentage of success was 60%, and odds were narrower, for example, 1.45, then a player is not likely to make money.

In this example, making 10 bets of €20 each at odds of 1.45 would result in winnings of €174 (€20 * 6 *1.45 odds). Given that the stake was €120 (€20 for each bet), then the net gain on the successful bets would be €54 (€174 - €120).

However, it is also important to remember the stake money for the 4 losing bets of €80 (€20 for each bet). When this is taken in to account, the player has actually lost €26 (€54 - €80) as the profits have not covered the losses.

This type of example should always be borne in mind when deciding on what type of sport to bet. Whilst football is the world’s most popular sport, not only in terms of followers, but also when it comes to gambling, it is not necessarily the most attractive when it comes to betting. This is because the odds are complicated by the possibility there may be a draw, and, as a low-scoring game, in-play odds do not vary greatly.

By contrast, a sport like tennis or basketball gives many options to bet on the score, or variations of it, and the live odds vary much more.

There are many different ways in terms of how to bet on sports, but remember always to review the success of your own bets, and determine the sports in which they perform best.