Below, David Bockino shares five key insights from his new book, Over/Under: An Unexpected History of Sports Betting.
David used to work in advertising at ESPN and now teaches media and sport management courses in the School of Communications at Elon University.
What’s the big idea?
Sports betting is not a new or foreign force invading American sports—it has been deeply intertwined with American sports culture from the very beginning. Today’s betting boom is largely a continuation of historical patterns enabled by new technology.
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1. Betting is America’s real national pastime.
During a recent interview with Malcolm Gladwell, author Michael Lewis referred to sports betting as an “invasive species.” I’ve heard other experts make similar arguments, describing betting as a growing nuisance tainting the sanctity of American sports.
But I spent two years researching the history of sports betting and believe the complete opposite is true. Betting isn’t invasive; it’s native. The first fans of nearly every American sport—from baseball and golf to hockey and football—weren’t there to cheer for their favorite players and teams but rather to place a wager on the outcome. Gambling was and remains America’s true national pastime, an essential catalyst that sparked two centuries of sports fandom and obsession.
Baseball is the perfect example. In the mid-to-late 19th century, many New Yorkers were looking for stuff to bet on. Many spent their days in places such as Kit Burn’s Sportsman’s Hall, a dimly lit, downtown establishment where patrons could wager on all kinds of matchups: rat vs. rat, dog vs. dog, rat vs. dog, even human vs. rat.
Then baseball came around. It was played outdoors, a refreshing alternative to the grimy gambling halls, and its pitch-by-pitch cadence was perfect for betting. New Yorkers loved it.
The stands were soon filled with bettors. And the enthusiasm from those gamblers helped the sport build the momentum it needed to become, well, America’s other national pastime.
2. Much of what we’re seeing today has happened before.
So many aspects of the modern sports betting landscape can be explained with a history lesson. Consider the type of bets being placed. In the 1930s, Americans were obsessed with baseball and football pool cards. Described by one journalist as the country’s “fastest growing industry,” pool cards were small, printed slips with a list of upcoming games that delivered a payout to anyone who correctly picked a select number of winners. Customers loved them because they were like lottery tickets: bet a little to win a lot. Bookmakers loved them because the odds were high and most people lost.
Today, history repeats itself as Americans have become hooked on parlays, bets that involve combining multiple outcomes to increase a wager’s payout. If a friend has ever come up to you and explained how close he was to getting a massive payout if only Jalen Brunson of the New York Knicks had scored six more points, he was probably talking about a parlay.
“Thanks to technology, sportsbooks can calculate odds for nearly any combination of bets.”
By some estimates, parlays make up around two-thirds of all bets placed on major operators like DraftKings and FanDuel. They’re the most profitable component of the online sportsbook business model. They’re also very similar to the football pool cards Americans were playing a hundred years earlier. The big difference? Thanks to technology, sportsbooks can calculate odds for nearly any combination of bets. The guys hanging out on street corners in the 1930s didn’t have that luxury—they had to do it with pencil on paper.
Maybe the current explosion of sports betting isn’t so much a societal shift. Maybe it’s more of a technological one.
3. The misdirection of integrity.
If betting was fundamental to the growth of the American sports industry, then why was the activity illegal for so long? The answer is integrity.
For decades, leagues such as the NFL and Major League Baseball were adamant that betting needed to remain illegal in order to protect the “integrity” of American sports. These statements were often couched in grand moral arguments about how betting would tarnish the very fabric of what made our favorite sports so great.
But integrity was often just a math equation. Commissioners and owners believed that if betting became legal, more games would start being rigged. If fans thought the games were rigged, they would stop caring about the outcome. And if fans stopped caring about the outcome, everyone would make less money on tickets and media rights. Franchise values would plummet. In other words, “integrity” was just another word for “value.” The former just sounded better in a press release.
And why is sports betting now prominent at every stadium and on every broadcast? Another math equation: The value gained through sponsorships and “fan engagement” (as in: people watching more games because they have bets on them) seemingly outweighs the potential value lost from rigged games and disillusioned fans.
4. Sports betting has never been a political priority.
But the leagues don’t make the laws. Politicians do. Right? Well, kind of.
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush signed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) into law. The legislation made sports betting illegal in all but a handful of states. The law would stand until 2018, when the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, ushering in the mostly legal sports betting landscape we have today.
A recent article in The Atlantic laments how the court majority in that case “made no effort to consider the public-policy rationale that had led Congress to make the law.” But my research shows that PASPA wasn’t a result of “public-policy rationale.” Instead, the law came at the request of the NFL, a league concerned about betting scandals in the late 1980s and worried that several states were about to create their own sports lotteries using their trademarks.
“Most legislation related to sports betting over the past century has usually been tied to other purposes.”
So, they reached out to an ally, Arizona Senator Dennis DeConcini, somebody they had been speaking with for over six years, to get something on the books. Although DeConcini’s name was on the bill, the league remained in control. When a New Mexico senator reached out to see if his state could be granted an exception for a specific type of bicycle racing on which people liked to gamble, DeConcini wrote in his notes, “If NFL has no problem, okay to try.”
PASPA wasn’t an outlier either. Most legislation related to sports betting over the past century has usually been tied to other purposes. The 1961 Federal Wire Act, for instance, wasn’t conceived to prevent Frank in Madison from putting down $20 on the Packers to cover the spread. The law was pushed through by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to cut off a main revenue source for the mob.
That sports betting has never really been a political priority is important to remember as a growing group of critics looks toward Washington to transform our current betting landscape. If history is a guide, they might be waiting a long time.
5. The future of sports betting and fandom.
After years of research and dozens of conversations with college students, I’ve come to view the rise of sports betting as part of two larger shifts: the increased personalization of sports media and the attempt to extract every single morsel of value from modern-day fans. So far, it’s worked. Ratings are up, and franchise values have never been higher.
But many of my students view betting as a net negative for American sports. They don’t love all the commercials. They see their friends caring far more about their four-leg parlay than wins or losses. And most know at least one person who has or might be developing a gambling addiction.
In the short-term, American sports can survive this. The San Diego Padres were just sold for almost $4 billion. The business is fine. But long-term? That’s still up for debate.
In 1870, as baseball and betting grew more intertwined, a New York Times writer remarked: “It is one of the defects of our national character… that no sooner do we get hold of a good thing of this sort, than we proceed to make it hurtful by excess.”
The same could probably be said of the situation today.
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