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Recent studies show
that one in four Americans will place a
sports bet this year and the Las Vegas
figure of $2 billion dollars bet in a year
pails in comparison to an estimated $63
billion dollars that will be bet online in
the same time frame. With
that huge amount in mind, let’s take a
look how we got to this point and the
history of sports betting in general.
Las Vegas gambling
was legalized in 1931 but in the early days
the only places to get a bet in were called
“turf clubs” and were nothing like the
sophisticated sportsbooks that are in the
town nowadays. With the
government imposing a 10 percent tax on bets
at this time, it was impossible for the
clubs to offer anything close to a standard
-110 line and the customers had to pay much
more in commission then they do now.
It wasn’t until
1958 when a reputed Chicago gangster by the
name of Sam “Momo” Giancana got sports
betting started big in Las Vegas at the
Stardust. Between the
ties to the mob and incidents like the 1919
World Series in which Chicago White Sox
players were caught being bought off by
sports bettors, gambling really did not have
a good reputation in the early years.
As more and more
sporting events began to get televised in
the ‘70s, sports betting really took off
and started to gain mainstream popularity
but it wasn’t until 1974 when the United
States government deemed the 10 percent tax
unconstitutional when the ability to place a
wager become commonplace. With
the elimination of the 10 percent tax, Las
Vegas sportsbooks began to pop up everywhere
and it became much easier to get a bet down
on a more level playing field without
getting ripped off by your bookie’s odds.
The Stardust again
was at the center of the sports betting
world as Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, played
by Robert Deniro in the movie “Casino”,
started to develop the crown jewel of Las
Vegas sportsbooks. With
300 bettors and 6 huge televisions regularly
at the sportsbook at the Stardust, Rosenthal
really set the tone for the current Las
Vegas landscape which has sportsbooks in
most hotels.
As Vegas started to
get bigger in the ‘80s, online gambling
took off with the invent of the internet.
Although it was limited to just a few
sportsbooks in the early years and was never
really a threat to the Las Vegas income at
the time, it has become a force to be
reckoned with currently. There
are hundreds, if not thousands, of online
sportsbooks currently and you can place a
bet from almost anywhere in the world.
Although the legality of placing a
bet on the internet is still up in the air
thanks to the internet not being around when
the original law was passed which outlawed
betting outside Las Vegas in the United
States, the government only seems concerned
about going after the people who run the
offshore sportsbooks who travel across
American borders.
Pete Rose would cast
another black eye on sports betting in 1989
when he was given a permanent ban from being
associated in any way with the sport of
baseball. Rose admitted
at the time that he bet on the Cincinnati
Reds while managing the team. A
similar incident in 1994 was caused when
Arizona State’s men’s basketball team
was involved in allegations that they were
shaving points. With the
help of Las Vegas bookmakers, who became
concerned after more and more people began
to bet large sums of money on Sun Devils
games, the players were dealt with and the
whole situation was the last major American
sports betting scandal before NBA referee
Tim Donaghy plead guilty to two federal
charges for attempting to influence the
outcome of games to appease certain people
who were wagering money on the NBA games.
The future looks
bright for online sports betting as it
becomes more and more mainstream.
An increasing amount of online
advertising has drawn new customers into the
sports betting world and certain sportsbooks
are even getting into mixed martial arts
promotions and other non-conventional
investments. With no end
in site to the boom with the staggering
amount of money that is bet online each
year, look for sports betting to finish the
move out of the dark ages and become a
regular part in day-to-day Americana. |
