Sports betting

Editor’s note: The views stated in this article are the author’s opinion and arguably contentious. Derek Webb, a California resident mentioned in this piece, offers his alternative view here. Today tens of millions of Americans will happily place a billion bets they know they will lose. The tradition of March Madness office pools, one of the healthiest forms of camaraderie-based parlay gambling, will take place all across America, with people who have never seen a single game played by any college basketball team this season picking UC San Diego over Michigan, because they know a guy who knows ball and he has a feeling. Or, even more popular, the all-mascot bracket, which will struggle with this year’s Houston-SIU game – because they’re both the Cougars. Best to flip a coin?

A new football season has fans reaching for their wallets and e-wallets. Americans now bet more than $100 billion a year on the NFL through legal sportsbooks like FanDuel and DraftKings. Illegal gambling adds billions more. According to the American Gaming Association, 73.5 million bettors will make an NFL wager this year. Fifty million of us have skin in the game thanks to fantasy football teams that pay off in cash and bragging rights. Until recently, the men who run pro sports pretended that fans loved the Lions, Bengals and Bears out of sheer team spirit and a love of tailgating.

In the five years since the Supreme Court struck down a federal law banning sports gambling in most states, the sports landscape, at least in terms of the way events are covered, has been radically altered, and in many ways, changes are yet to come. Seemingly every week, a new sportsbook app arrives on the market. Broadcasts of sports are now inundated with updates about odds, point spreads and proposed parlays from analysts that fans are invited to wager on. Prior to the Supreme Court decision, gambling was the dirty little secret of the sports establishment. Of course gambling happened, and in places like Las Vegas it was legit, but it was considered tawdry among the more buttoned-down members of the sports mainstream.