A sportsbook is a gambling establishment that takes wagers on sports events and pays out winning bettors. They may be legal and licensed, like DraftKings or the Las Vegas sportsbooks, or illegal, run through privately owned enterprises called “bookies”. The word “sportsbook” is derived from the Latin phrase for “place of sport”.

A person who wants to place a wager on an event must first understand how to read and interpret a sportsbook’s odds. These odds essentially express the probability of an outcome as a price. The top US-based sportsbooks use positive (+) odds to show how much you can win with a $100 bet and negative (-) odds to show how much you have to risk to make the same amount of money.

The past few years have been a great time to bet on sports. Since most states have made sports betting legal, sportsbook operators have climbed over themselves to offer generous promotional terms. These offers have been attractive but also often sketchy – offering to match deposits in betting accounts or giving bettors free bets without requiring them to actually risk their own money. But the golden days of sports betting are quickly fading. These incentives that were designed to make the industry more friendly to bettors are being pared back or eliminated as the sportsbooks learn to turn a profit. This trend will only accelerate as more states introduce legal sportsbooks.