Sport Gambling and Where It Started

Sports betting is considered to be a form of gambling. Billions of dollars circulated in sports betting industry annually. Great sporting competitions (for example, the World Series and the Super Bowl) attract millions of bettors which leads to billions of dollars in bets.

Since the appearance of first sports, there have been people who were eager to wager on the results of games. At first, people used to bet at horse races or cockfights. It was not only the way of getting some money but the way of entertainment as well.

The beginning of sports betting

What concerns the first steps of bookmaking, in particular, sports betting, one should recall horse racing which was very popular at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century. But at that time racing was enjoyed mainly by the upper crust of the society. But step by step horse tracks began to appear everywhere and bettors from all classes crowded the racecourses.

At first, bookmakers used to make bets for each horse separately. But this format didn’t stay long as bettors were short of luck if the horse they wanted to bet on had already been taken. The bookmakers soon understood that if someone set odds on single horses it would blow up betting handle and, as a result, their own money. As soon as there were too many bets on one horse, the bookmaker used to lower the odds to warm up the attraction of other horses in that race. In some parts of the world bookmakers still make use of this scheme though horse racing is not very popular at present.

At the end of the 18th century baseball started to come in and the new type of betting – betting on sport – appeared. Baseball 'pool-cards' reminded present-day parlay cards. Bettors had a wide choice of baseball betting options. The min bet was 10 cents. But there was one problem – a bettor had no chance to win a lot as the odds were calculated in favor of the bookmaker. But it didn’t stop the spreading of bookmaker’s houses.