Multiple intersecting threads brought the end of this decades-long regime. Laws were occasionally passed to keep sports gambling a gray- or black-market activity, including the 1961 Federal Wire Act, which banned the use of wire communications for “interstate or foreign commerce of bets or wagers … on any sporting event or contest,” and the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which functionally banned sports gambling outside of Nevada and a few other states with more limited sports betting.
Intermittent scandals like the 1919 Black Sox and mid-century college basketball match fixing and point shaving kept a stigma around sports gambling and convinced leagues it was better to keep the industry limited. For most of the 20th and 21st centuries, betting on sports was mostly limited to black-market bookies and the state of Nevada. That’s a recent change, and a fairly big one. The United States is in the midst of a sports gambling boom, and it may be a generational policy mistake.Īnyone who has watched the Super Bowl, listened to a sports podcast, walked into an arena that has a gambling parlor, or, in my case, opened my mailbox to see direct mail from DraftKings offering “free bets” has seen the explosion in sports betting throughout the US.
