If you watched this year’s Super Bowl or even a single game of the first two weekends of March Madness, there’s no way you failed to notice it: An endless stream of commercials touting sports books, encouraging fans to bet on the outcomes of the games.
Jason Kido Lopez has certainly noticed it. Lopez, an assistant professor of communication arts, researches the ways in which the commodification and industrialization of professional sports like basketball, football and baseball parallel the similar trajectory of sports betting and sports media. And all three are currently booming: Fortune magazine recently reported that Americans spent more than $52.7 billion on legalized sports betting in 2021, more than twice the amount spent in 2020. That number is expected to double again in 2022.
But while it may seem like sports gambling has exploded in the last five years since the federal ban on sports wagering was lifted in 2018, Lopez, who’s currently writing a book on the topic, notes that the real story’s a little different. Gambling and sports have been symbiotic since the very beginning.
“Part of the reason why sports like basketball, football and baseball rose to prominence was because of gambling,” says Lopez. “Part of the entertainment was people sitting in the stands and betting on the games. And once people decided there's a way to commodify and try to make money off that, bookmakers came into existence.”
Lopez, who describes himself as both a third-generation Dodgers fan and a third-generation sports gamer, had a grandfather who used to organize the football pools in the factory in which he worked.
As Lopez began teaching a sports media class at UW-Madison, he couldn’t help noticing the connections between sports media, the leagues and gaming. “Why are they married to sports in the way that they are? Why does sports media support them the way that they do?
While the short and obvious answer is money—check that $52.7 billion figure again if you’re still confused—the full backstory is long and winding, says Lopez. And it starts with horse racing, a sport that’s always been closely associated with gambling.
In the early 1900s, a series of betting scandals in multiple sports (horse racing, baseball, football and basketball) soured the public on the system of placing bets with shady bookkeepers in the stands and in smoky pool rooms. Horse racing solved the problem by embracing a pari-mutuel system where bets were pooled and the odds determined by the number of bettors, not by a bookkeeper.
“What they did started to really legalize sports betting,” says Lopez. “Bookmakers were illegal and something to worry about, but horse racing was okay because they had this whole system.”
The more recent pivot point came with the fantasy boom of the early 2000s, where people could suddenly use the Internet and platforms hosted by sports media companies (think ESPN, Fox, and CBS) to engage with sports leagues in gaming fashion through up-and-coming companies like FanDuel and DraftKings, dropping money on fantasy leagues year-round.
“All of a sudden, both the sports leagues and the media companies came to the conclusion that having people be able to play this way is fast and easy,” says Lopez. “They realized that this is something popular that's happening anyway. And if we can bring people in using that as a draw, then there's just more money to be made.”
In 2006, the U.S. government passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, ruling that fantasy leagues were “games of skill” rather than “games of chance,” further opening the floodgates—at least for people living in the 30 states where this type of gambling is currently legal.
Of course, with more money comes more potential problems and concerns. Betting on sport is contingent on the idea that games are unscripted and unpredictable, not fixed in advance to secure the legs of someone’s multi-legged parlay. (“That’s always been the existential life threat to sports,” says Lopez.) And while it’s not quite on par with “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and the other Chicago “Black Sox” taking money from a gambling syndicate to throw the 1919 World Series or Pete Rose getting nailed for betting on games in 1989, NFL receiver Calvin Ridley just got suspended for the entirety of the 2022 season for betting on NFL games when he was on injured reserve and away from his team.
Lopez expects the 20 states where gambling remains illegal to push hard to join the states where it is legal. He also thinks the U.S. may end up emulating countries like England, where it’s easy to bet on matches, and there are advertisements for sports books on players’ jerseys. Digital and mobile apps will likely only make the sports betting trend even more ubiquitous.
“Let’s put it this way: If you hate those commercials for sports books, I'm not sure they're going to be going away anytime soon,” he says.