Americans love to gamble and will gamble on just about anything, and those that run gambling sites overseas are well aware of the fact that Americans have the money and the desire to gamble, which is why they try to accommodate most everything that would entice an American to visit and to play for real money on their offshore internet site. When it comes to football, in order to get betting action on a football game, a line is produced which handicaps one team against the other, which means that the favored team will have to give up points against the weaker opposition, so that you will invariably see printed in papers or online, things such as the Patriots -6, meaning that when the game is over and score is tallied up, that determining the winner of the bet comes down to subtracting 6 points from the Patriots score and whoever then has more points after this adjustment is made is the team that actually wins the bet.
The actual betting on football games is legal in America, but only in a few particular states, to which the industry leader is Nevada. This means for the vast majority of Americans, that they must turn to other sources to make their bets and the offshore internet betting sites are well aware of that propensity and have successfully taken advantage of a market that is underserved in America. One of those sites that accept American players is the Costa Rican-based 5dimes which has been handling sports betting since 1998. What makes 5dimes a bit more interesting than most, is that they actually make lines on some important High School football games, which seems like a joke, but in actuality is absolutely true. This means that Americans can place a bet on High School kids from the comfort of their home, which certainly seems unfathomable but it does indeed exist.
While the High School football lines on 5dimes are structured the same as their NFL and college lines, there are two important and critical difference, to which one is the vigorish, that is to say the percentage that the bookmaker takes or charges its customer when they make their bet, as well as the fact that the monetary limit for High School football is only $100 per account. The "vig" for High School football is -120, whereas typically the industry norm is -110, meaning that a bettor must put up $120 to get $220 from the bookmaker ($120 + $100 for a winning bet), which equates to an actual winning percentage of 54.55% just to breakeven over a period of time.
Yes, when it is all said and done, on your computer or mobile device, you can bet on certain, specific High School football games, which consist of unpaid High School students from the ages of 15-18, and of which the players themselves as well as the coaches are typically blithely unaware of the betting action, incapable of believing that there is a line on the game, or that any of this is even possible, but there it is.
The bottom line, is the need for betting action on High School football, merely reflects back to us, how serious these games are for certain players, coaches, teams, communities, fans, parents, and recruiters, that take the actual play of the game as serious enough to lay real money on it.