By: Candy Man
Every weekend on social media, you see people post theirtickets that made them hundreds of dollars off parlays or cost them hundreds just off of one team. Floyd Mayweather regularly posts tickets on Instagram of him winning millions. Sports gambling has become big business in this country & all over the world and there are many outlets to feed this business. From Vegas to Atlantic City, people go to the books or casinos to put in their tickets. Online gambling sites have become ever more popular lately. People tune in every week to the Vegas books to see the spreads and odds of every game in every sport. Even popular fantasy sites like FanDuel, which pays out about $10 million every week in cash prizes & just locked up a deal with the NBA, are participating with daily fantasy games. Wagers are placed on anything from who will score first in a certain game to youth sports on athletes as young as 6.
As a whole, about $400 billion is wagered illegally in the U.S. every year. Sports gambling is still illegal in most of the country except Nevada, Oregon, Montana, & Delaware. Despite that, major sports figures such as NBA commissioner Adam Silver and NBA owner Mark Cuban have come out in public to back the legalization of betting in sports. Even media outlets such as ESPN have recently come out with an entire section dedicated to money lines, point spreads, & over/unders on their website and t.v. coverage.
I, along with many of my peers, gamble on sports. It gets you more invested in the games while giving you an opportunity to make some extra money at the same time. I think America is changing their mindset when it comes to this topic and you’ll see more states legalize sports gambling in the future. The major concern is that it will creep into the sports itself and start affecting the games in a negative manner. Controversial scandals like Pete Rose in baseball, Tim Donaghy in the NBA, and Boston College men’s basketball, which inspired an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary, have illustrated this point. But with strict regulations and safety measures, the federal and state governments can guard against that.
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