Published: 5 March, 2010
The History of Sports Betting
Americans love to bet. It was estimated that $10 billion worldwide was wagered on the Super Bowl earlier this month. Today, you can bet on pretty much anything; on who will win the coin toss, on who will get the first touchdown, or on whether the first score will even be a touchdown at all.
But where did it all start? How did we get from auction pools to sports books? Which sports were most important? The purpose of this release is to take a brief look at the beginning of sports betting in America in order to answer a few of these questions.
The Beginning
The English colonists had long been fond of a bet. However, in the United States, the first clear wave of sports betting popularity came for horseracing, in the 19th century, after the civil war. The United States quickly went from a country where racing was enjoyed by a privileged few to a land whose eastern states began fostering scores of racetracks, to which droves of Americans of all kinds began to flock.
The betting then was organized by bookmakers (naturally), into auction pools, by which off-bets were auctioned for particular horses. The problem being that bettors had no alternatives if the horse they wanted to bet on was already taken. The bookmakers, being the enterprising bunch they've always been, soon realized that they could make more money and satisfy more bettors by setting odds on individual horses.
The peak in the popularity of horseracing came around 1920, a few decades after baseball, the next big thing in betting, began to gain its popularity. For baseball, "Poolcards" were the betting mode of choice - much like today's parlay cards - they offered bettors an abundance of betting options, for which they could buy in for as little as 10 cents.
All bets are off, or are they?
Following the "Black Sox Scandal" of the 1919 World Series, sports bettors were blamed for compromising the integrity of the nation's favorite sport, and were thereafter regarded in a very poor light. Despite this, betting on baseball remained as popular as ever, and the 1920s later came to be known as a golden decade of sport, in which betting on college basketball, college football and boxing joined the fore amongst Americans' favorite sports to bet on.
90 Years on, and much has changed. The vast sums of money used on administration, players and betting, alike, have ballooned to once-unimaginable quantities. Poolcards, and their successors, have given way to sports betting, and online betting. But two things remain the same; America's love for sport and, so it seems, for betting.
Tags: sports betting, history of Sports betting
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