Posts Tagged ‘sports betting’
“The excitement that a gambler feels when making a bet is equal to the amount he might win times the probability of winning it.”*…
This afternoon’s Super Bowl is yet to be played, but it is already destined for the record books…
The American Gaming Association expects 50.4 million Americans to wager legally on the game (up over 61% from last year), for a total of $16 Billion at stake (more than twice last year’s betting). To put this into context, in 2022, U.S. legal gambling totaled about $55 billion.
It will also be the first Championship game with an on-site sports book (though attendees don’t need to leave their seats to wager; Arizona is one of the 33 states [plus D.C.] in which they can make bets in licensed betting shops on the way to the game… or, of course, they can just use their phones to bet online).
Sports betting is exploding in the U.S. About 20% of U.S. adults said that they had placed sports bets in 2022. Some of those bets were through legal channels. But The AGA estimates that American also wagered almost $64 billion in 2021 with illegal sports books– part of the $511 Billion bet on those books, iGaming websites, and “skill games.”
These figures exclude the purchase of state lottery tickets, which has grown to over $100 billion. The average American spent $46 on lottery tickets in the U.S. in 2022; but the amounts varied wildly from state-to-state– in Massachusetts, residents spent an average of $805.30.
See also: “How Sports Betting Upended the Economies of Native American Tribes.”
* Blaise Pascal, whose correspondence with Pierre de Fermat on gambling laid the foundation for the modern theory of probability
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As we wonder about wagering, we might send insightful birthday greetings to Charles Darwin; he was born on this date in 1809. A naturalist, geologist, and biologist, he is widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science.
In a 1858 joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin published a more complete version of his theory of evolution, with compelling evidence. in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species.
Darwin’s scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life– for which he has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history.
“Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people”*…
Still, people do an awful lot of betting. Legal sports betting currently runs at almost $77 Billion per year in the U.S. and is growing by double digits; last year, 40 percent of people aged 18 to 44 gambled online (sports and casino wagering combined), nearly double the 21 percent of those aged 45 to 54. Illegal gambling (for understandable reasons, harder to gauge) is estimated at (at least) $1.7 Trillion globally, and also on the rise (in part because it’s such a handy way to launder money).
As football season gets underway, Jeopardy! champ (and gambler) James Holzhauer considers the ways in which a sports wagerer is like a stock market investor…
The sports betting marketplace has many parallels to the world of finance: both are essentially populated with speculators trying to make money by outsmarting everyone else. Some sportsbook conglomerates have even been run by people with experience on Wall Street. But how do the two compare side by side? Let’s look at some key similarities and differences between the two modes of investing…
Diversification, insider trading, derivatives, inflation concerns: “How sports betting and the stock market compare,” from @James_Holzhauer in @TheAthletic.
(Image above: source)
* W.C. Fields
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As we punt, we might recall that it was on this date in 1930 that Al “Scarface” Capone enlisted former rivals into partnership to form a giant co-operative organization to control the beer/spirits, vice, and gambling “industries” in Chicago. The Syndicate, as it was known, was headed by Capone and run by a cabinet, with each member controlling different areas of the business: alcohol sales, alcohol running, gambling, vice, and war on those outside the Syndicate.
The following year, Capone was charged with tax evasion; in 1932 he was convicted and sentenced to the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta; in 1934 he was transferred to Alcatraz.
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