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For many casual sports viewers, online gambling might seem to have come out of nowhere. It’s only recently that sports betting has gone mainstream, thanks largely to the expansion of fantasy sports leagues and online sports betting. Viewers of major sports leagues like the MLB will see advertisements for sports betting sites on the field itself, and fans of the NFL will hear the announcers themselves plugging sports betting and see advertisements where football superstars endorse betting sites.
“We the People” Want to Gamble Online, Apparently
However, this recent trend might be as much about social movements as legal movements. The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which many credit for the growth of sports betting, is already six years old. Its main contribution has been to allow states to set their own individual laws around sports betting, and many states either never banned it on the state level or have since opened the doors.
In this way, it comes down to democracy, and democracy comes down to social trends. People are interested in gambling, and not just in sports gambling. You can find publishing guides on sports betting as easily as you can find Techopedia’s slots guide. Online poker and casino games beat sports betting to state-level legalization back in 2011, a little late for the 2003 Poker Boom, but the online gambling market has increased steadily and continues to rise.
There’s the democracy of votes, and then there’s the democracy of wallets, and both seem to heavily favor opening the world of online gambling.
Consumer Protections Are in the Works
As is often the case when laws change to let some risky old idea become new again, consumer protections are lagging. Many states have erected legal frameworks around online casinos by now since they’ve had over a decade to work on it. Online sports betting and for-profit fantasy sports leagues have caught several states flat-footed, however. As online sports betting becomes legal in an increasing number of states, the capital investment in the market has grown considerably.
This is why it feels, to so many, to have come out of nowhere. The potential for the legal gambling market has reached the threshold where it’s going mainstream, while at the same time legal frameworks to limit it are underdeveloped, so many investors and companies see a window of opportunity to be big, boisterous, loud, and profitable.
For Better or Worse, This Is How It Is
This isn’t to say that online sports betting is especially unsafe because of the absence of a legal framework. The free market provides its own pressures, after all, and there’s intense competition between online gambling platforms. But gambling is always risky, and it always will be. It’s dangerous to the wallet and to the health of gamblers, if nothing else. These are dangers that legal frameworks will not protect you from.
Despite this, online gambling is something people want. They’re voting for it, and they’re investing in it. Now that it’s legal, it would be incredibly difficult to put it away again, assuming any legal effort could find enough popular support to try. Online gambling will only continue to grow quicker and larger, at least in the short term. So
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