Horse Racing: The Rise Of Sports Gambling

Over the past couple decades, sports gambling has become a growing industry and a hotly debated topic. Sports gambling is the act of placing a monetary wager on a sporting event for a specific outcome to happen. Daniel P. Connaughton claims sports gambling has always been an attractive medium for betting because the outcome of the games is unknown and so many factors go into a sports game (436). But currently as it stands in the United States, people may only bet on sports in Nevada. Yet the industry continues to expand and according to Jeffrey Roske, “Americans wager over $500 billion per year on sports. Of this staggering total, only $2-$3 billion per year are gambled legally within the state of Nevada…” (463). Roske’s evidence brings up

People have always had an interest in wagering on a game to gain monetarily and for self-pride. One of the biggest contributors to the popularity and rise of gambling was horse racing. Lucio Colortuoni argues the whole sports gambling market was initially created out of a passion for horse racing (282). Horse racing is a perfect forum to gambling on, multiple horses to pick from and there is a lot of races. Horse racing started back in the late 1600’s and although the popularity has declined, some races are still broadcasted to this day. It is also hard to fix a race. Match fixing is when somebody, usually the bookmaker (person who takes the bets) pays a player, coach or referee to favor one side in order to make sure the bookmaker wins money. According to David Forrest “Match fixing appears to be as old as organized sports itself” (157). One of the first major fixing scandals happened in the 1919 World Series. Some of the members of the Chicago White Sox’s were accused of, and admitted to fixing the World Series games (Roske, 463). The history of sport gambling has been plagued with scandals like this. But sports gambling has also brought joy to many people throughout the years or else betting would cease to

A set of three laws made betting against the law starting in 1961 with the Wire Communications Act (WCA). According to Roske, this made using a phone to send or receive bets illegal. The act also made any form of bet over a communication device illegal (466). The next law was the Transportation in Aid in Racketeering Enterprise Act. This Act added to the Wire Communication Act be not allowing any form of gambling to be conducted by traveling or by mail. Both of these acts were established to stop gambling before it could start. The final law was the Inter State Transportation of Wagering Paraphernalia Act which made it illegal to transport gambling equipment to sporting events (466). These three laws combined to outlaw sports betting in the United States. Yet it was hard to expose bookmakers and bettors without sufficient evidence, which usually takes a long period of time. The major law was enacted in 1991 and is known as the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA). Karuakis said “PASPA’s intended purpose was to prohibit sports gambling conducted by, or authorized under the law of, any State or other governmental entity” (20). Congress later in 2006 outlawed online gambling (Karurakis, 14). A major crackdown on gambling happened on May 23, 2011. Karurakis stated that on this day the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shutdown ten online gambling websites and