Commercial feature – Sports spread betting isn’t new by any means, but is fast becoming the biggest gambling phenomenon in the UK.

It is so popular in the US that channels are devoted entirely to it and there’s even been an Al Pacino movie about it. Thankfully, sports spread betting has finally made its way over here.

For those of you who’ve yet to have the pleasure of spread betting, it stems from playing the stock markets. City traders spend money trying to buy low and sell high on share prices and spread betting uses the same principle.

Instead of shares though, spread betters gamble on anything from points scored in a cricket match to the amount of bookings in a football game. The bookmaker will give their prediction, for example five to six bookings in the World Cup final and this is the spread. So if you thought there would be more than six you would buy more bookings at say £5 each one. Now we know there were a record 14 bookings in that game, so if you’d have bet the way just mentioned then you’d have won £40, because eight above the spread, multiplied by your stake of £5 equals £40.

The same principle applies if you’d have sold at five and bet £5 for each booking below the spread, then you would have lost £45 because the difference between the actual outcome and where you sold at was nine, multiplied by your stake of £5 equals £45.

This is the way that decent money can be won or lost by predicting whether to go higher or lower than the bookmakers’ predictions. As long as you don’t overdo it and aren’t drastically wrong then it’s a good way to gamble. If like me, you know your football quite well, then you can usually predict the scores of a game to within one or two goals.

This is what the bookies will do if they were offering a spread of one goal in United’s favour against City, as an example. If you think City will win you can bet £50 per goal below the spread. If City triumph two-nil you’d win £150 because the bookies favoured United by one.

It’s not foolproof, but what gambling is? There is a danger that if you’re on the wrong end of a lopsided result and you’ve bet a lot on each point or goal you could lose a large amount. But for the most part it is a good way to put your knowledge of certain teams and sporting events to good use.

Many spread betting companies offer bets on all sorts of sporting events and if you’re still not 100 per cent sure how it all works, they each offer basic tutorials to explain the pitfalls and benefits.

One of the advantages of spread betting is that you can also make in-game bets, so you can wait to see how a game develops before placing a bet. Although remember, the longer you leave it before placing your bet, the more the spread will change towards the likely outcome.

Spreading betting can result in losses that exceed your original deposit. Remember to bet responsibly.