Sports betting and its history

Filed in archive Quick introduction on January 10, 2010

© wonker

I think the first love of Americans is sports betting and it can be judged from the fact that $10 billion worth bets were placed on the latest Super Bowl season. Today people place a bet on just anything and everything for e.g. like who is going to win the coin toss or who will go for the first touchdown.

Most of us are involved in sports betting but very few of us know about its history. The English were a big fan of betting but it was in United States where the first wave of sports betting started in the nineteenth century with horseracing. Bookmakers organized betting into auction plans through which off bets were auctioned in case of specific horses. This created problem as bettors didn't get a choice if the horse they wanted to bet on was already taken. Realizing this bookmakers came up with an idea to generate more money by setting odds on individual horses.

After horseracing, baseball was the next big thing in sports betting. Poolcards were used for betting in baseball as they gave a number of options to bettors which could be purchased for as low as ten cents.

The Black Sox Scandal of the 1919 World Series created a blot on the image sports bettors as the case of compromise of integrity of country's favorite sports was exposed. Even this did not affect the passion for betting and the twenties came to be known as the golden decade of betting as other sports such as boxing, college football and college basketball joined the league.

It has been ninety years since then and the dream run still continues. Unimaginable sums of money are being used on betting, players and administration. Poolcards have given way to online betting and sports betting. Many things have changed since then but Americans love for betting and sports have just got stronger with each passing day.