Everyone who has ever enjoyed a flutter on Virtual Sports 
understands that these games are computer-generated replicas of real sports. Indeed, you can argue that Virtual Sports Betting is in itself, a digitised version of the real-life betting industry (which somewhat oddly, it is also an increasingly important part of).
However, it is easy at times to see the limitations of Virtual Sports compared to real life sports but perhaps there’s not enough focus on the benefits Virtual Sports also hold over their real-world competitors. In this article, we are going to take a look at some of the benefits you have betting on Virtual Sports compared to real life sporting events, and also what some of the negatives are.
By looking at these different positive and negative aspects, you can then get a more rounded appreciation of what both Virtual Sports and standard sports betting has to offer and decide whether one is more preferable to you than the other, or whether you’d join millions of other punters in enjoying the best of what both have to offer.
Virtual Sports Betting v Real Sports Betting – The Pro’s
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Speed of Resolution of your bets
Without doubt the biggest and most positive aspect for many punters regarding Virtual Sports over real-life sports is that with Virtual Sports, you only have to wait around three minutes maximum to know the outcome of your bet.
In a real-life sport of course, the time you need to wait can be considerable, ranging from a few minutes for a horse race to be completed, to an hour (for a basketball match) even to the extent of five days or much, much longer (in the case of some Cricket test matches for example, or if you have placed a bet on a football team winning a certain competition).
With Virtual Sports, there is no requirement to sit and wait for your results to come in as the longest you have to wait will be 3 minutes or so. This means Virtual Sports is ideally suited to punters that like to place lots of bets, usually smaller in value, in a short time frame and who then want the results of these bets as quickly as possible.
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No Skill, Understanding or Prior Knowledge/Experience Required
In the real world of sports, teams and individuals have their performances analysed and many punters put great stock in researching this before they make a bet. In horse racing for example, you can study the form of a horse, its breeding, the form of the jockey riding the horse, how the stable or trainer that trains the horse is performing and plenty of other variables before you bet and many people argue that this research gives them the edge.
Now of course, if you are a professional gambler that can spend this time doing this each day that is great, but for most punters, they cannot devote hours to researching individual bets. In Virtual Sports though, everything generates randomly for each event; so, there is no form and no past performances to analyse. This makes these games more down to chance, but also means that all players of all abilities and experience start from a level playing field when betting.
In this respect, this makes Virtual Sports games much more like a form of gambling like Slot games, where there is no skill element involved. For some people this may be a “con” rather than a “pro” but that very much depends on your point of view. If you aren’t the biggest sports fan, then Virtual Sports gives you a simple and easy way to enjoy sports betting without having that specialist sports knowledge.
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Available 24/7, 365 Days a Year
While there are always plenty of sports events taking place around the globe each day of the year in most cases, there are times when you want to place a bet on a real-life sport, but you often face a wait of sometime before your bet can either be made, or the outcome be decided.
For example, if you wanted to place a bet on the outcome of England’s first World Cup match this summer in Russia 2018, then you would have a wait of around six months from the time of writing (Jan 2018) before your bet will be finalised. If you want to bet on a specific market for this game, such as the first goalscorer, then you may have to wait until much closer to the game to place the bet.
With Virtual Sports this isn’t an issue as all games are available across all Virtual Sports 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. As all the games are processed by software, rather than exertion from humans, machines or animals, Virtual Sports never need to stop and there’s never a time when you cannot place a bet.
Virtual Sports Betting v Real Sports Betting – The Con’s
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No skill or judgement element
We touched upon this above as being a positive about Virtual Sports betting, but whether this is a positive or negative depends very much on how you prefer to gamble. If you are not a big sports fan, but love slot games for example, or other games of chance, then Virtual Sports lack of any skill or judgement element is a positive for you.
However, if you are a sports punter who regularly judges the form of the teams or individuals you are looking to bet on, then not having this available is not likely to be a positive for you. However, it is worth remembering that form and judgement are one thing and even the best researched bet can lose, while plenty of people have picked a winner entirely at random.
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Limited choice of markets compared to real sports
Perhaps the clear and biggest drawback for Virtual Sports compared to their real-life counterparts is the fact that there are just not as many markets to bet on as there are for real games. If we use football as an example, while there are a large number of Virtual Sports betting markets available on these football matches, they are dwarfed by the number of markets available for a real life game (which can often run into several hundred different betting markets).
In addition, some bets on Virtual Sports are, at present, unavailable and that includes some of the most popular sports bets. Such as betting on the First or Last Goalscorer in a football game or Set Betting in tennis.
As Virtual Sports develop over time, I do see these types of bet being worked into the games available, but at present, they remain unavailable to Virtual Sports betting punters.
In short, while Virtual Sports does have a few negative aspects, it also has many positive aspects and offers different types of punters the chance to experience something a little different to what they usually do, while appealing to both.
