The Football Boot Awards had their inaugural year in 2007 and quickly established itself as the leading festival in the football boot industry. Originally consisting of five categories including ‘Most Comfortable’ and ‘Football Brand of the Year’ the Footy Boots awards were unlike anything that had preceded them. Whilst many doubted that such a niche topic warranted a genuine set of awards, the Footy-Boots.com audience – and readers of print partner Zoo Magazine – helped make the 2007 awards a real breakout success.

2008 saw the Awards expand at an unprecedented rate; as well as continuing partnership with Zoo magazine, the awards were lent further weight from Kitbag.com, Europe’s largest sporting good supplier and WorldSoccerShop the US leader.

Voters once again turned out in their droves, registering tens of thousands of individual voters nominating their favourites in a number of new categories expanded to include ‘Best Football Shirt’ and for the first time a ‘Panel’s Choice’ award; a team of experts from around the industry, including BBC Journalists, Ex-Players and former Boot Designers.

As 2007 and 2008 saw the rise of smaller boot companies, the 2009 Awards were a perfect showcase for new brands who had spent the last 12 months honing their craft. Two new brands picked up awards in the two newest categories – Safest Football Boot & Most Outrageous design.

The Football Boots Awards have developed a reputation among the biggest sports companies in the world – not just as an unmitigated success – but as a level playing field between Fortune 500 companies and outrageous upstarts, where good design is the only thing that matters to the ultimate target audience.

2010 sees the awards enter their 4th year, and promises to be the finest yet. A revamped interface promises to make voting this year even easier than before; coupled with extended voting time, Footy-Boots.com expects to receive more votes than ever. A new print partner has been established in the wildly popular Football Punk magazine, whilst Kitbag.com and WorldSoccerShop.com are both lead donors again.

The most common kind of bet in the football wagering system is the spread wager, this is where the bookie will determine which team is the favorite and which is the underdog and the number of points a team has to win or lose by so that the gambler can obtain a payout.

While you are looking at the wagering line, you will see one team with a minus sign beside the number and that signifies that they are the favorite. So let’s say that the Jets from New York are favorites by 6.5 beside their name, that would indicate that they are the favorite and that the opposition would need to lose by 7 or more points so that those who places a wager on the Jets could collect their winnings. In another instance, if New York wins by only 6 points then the gamblers going against the Jets would win their bets. So what this essentially means is that you could still end up losing your wager against the spread even if you choose the team that wins the game.

Of course there are plenty of different forms of bets that you can in the football wagering system which contain futures, squares and over/under totals, but wagering with the point spread is the most popular and the one that you will be using most frequently.