Players, leagues and fans have been reckoning with the still-unfolding effects of sports gambling since a Supreme Court ruling handed the question of legalization to states in 2018. Each constituency may be arriving at the realization those impacts have mushroomed beyond anyone’s control.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for legalized sports betting five years ago, nearly three-fourths of the states have moved swiftly to allow it.
The spread of legalized sports gambling—and some early scandals—have captured the full attention of athletic departments and conference offices. All major conferences are paying independent betting monitors to make sure their athletes abide by the rules—and to catch those who are not.
ESPN announced Tuesday that the sports media giant will partner with gambling operator Penn Entertainment to launch a nationwide string of ESPN-branded sportsbooks.
Last year, Indiana sports betting peaked at $4.4 billion worth of bets, but Hoosier sports wagers slowed in the first half of 2023 when Ohio joined the fray. For instance, in June, sports betting in Indiana was 13% lower than the $256 million registered in June 2022.
Nationwide, legal sports betting has generated more than $3 billion in state and federal taxes since the 2018 Supreme Court ruling allowing it, according to the American Gaming Association.
A proposal to legalize online casino gambling in Indiana has failed to gain traction for a third consecutive year despite earlier optimism about its prospects. A powerful confluence of factors led to its demise.
A survey of 145 Division I public universities in the states where sports betting is legal found that only 23% had published sports betting policies. Purdue University is one of them.
Indiana’s horse racing industry has more than doubled in economic value in the past decade, according to a study led by Purdue University.
Every sportsbook has terms of service that establish how it handles such scenarios, but the fantasy football side of the equation is much trickier to solve.
The American Gaming Association predicted that $3.1 billion will be wagered on this year’s tournament, a figure that includes legal bets as well as those placed with illegal bookies or offshore web sites.
Sporttrade Inc. offers users a betting exchange through which they can trade sports bets as if they were stocks.
The American Gaming Association forecasts that over $7.6 billion will be wagered on pro football’s championship game set for Sunday.
The Indiana Gaming Commission said the state’s online and retail sports wagering operations could accept bets on alpine skiing, bobsled, cross-country skiing, curling, ice hockey, short-track speed skating and speed skating.
Based on data from the Indiana Gaming Commission, sports bettors placed more than $460 million in wagers in December, up from the November handle of $463.7 million.
Sports betting analysts say interest in football, particularly the Indianapolis Colts, Indiana University and Notre Dame, is fueling wagers.
According to a revenue report released Friday by the Indiana Gaming Commission, the sports betting handle more than doubled from July to August to reach its highest mark since February, before the pandemic hit the state.
Indiana took a major hit in expected gambling revenue during March, not only because of closed casinos, but because the cancellation of major sports events severely limited sports betting.
The $91.7 million that Indiana sportsbooks accepted last month is almost triple the amount wagered in September when sports betting became legal.
PlayUSA.com Network, a news and research organization that follows sports gambling and operates PlayNJ.com and PlayIndiana.com, called the first-month data “impressive.”
