A sportsbook is a place where people can place wagers on various sporting events. They can be placed either online or in person at the sportsbook itself. Sportsbooks set the odds for bettors and make money by taking a percentage of each bet. In the United States, legal sports betting was restricted to a few states until 2018, when the Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act.

The first step in running a sportsbook is to research the industry and find out about the legal regulations in your area. Once you have this information, you can then move on to establishing your budget and requirements. This will help you decide how big or small you want your sportsbook to be.

Another important consideration is what features you want your sportsbook to offer. For example, do you want it to offer a variety of betting markets? Is it easy for users to navigate? It’s also worth considering whether your sportsbook will be mobile-friendly.

Finally, you need to decide what payment methods you want to accept. The majority of sportsbooks will allow deposits via major credit cards and traditional and electronic bank transfers. Some will also accept popular transfer methods like PayPal.

Some sportsbooks also let bettors construct parlays, which combine different types of bets and outcomes into a single stake. However, this can be difficult as it requires all of the selections (or legs) to be correct for the bet to win.