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7 min read Economy

Empress of luck

Feature: Why is betting everywhere now? Gerda Reith on how it became so mixed up in sports—and then everything else.
—Gustav Jönsson, Gerda Reith
Empress of luck
Pavel Danilyuk

Last October, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York charged 36 people with involvement in illegal gambling, many of them former or current National Basketball Association players.

This January, U.S. prosecutors charged 26 people with fixing college basketball games. “This was a massive scheme,” U.S. Attorney David Metcalf said. “It enveloped the world of college basketball." Bribes ranged from US$10,000 to $30,000 a game.

There’s big money in sports betting, and the market is growing fast: In 2017, Americans placed US$4.9 billion in sports wagers; by 2023, that number had hit $121.1 billion.

In football’s English Premier League, 11 of 20 teams have gambling firms as their primary sponsors. That’s generated pushback: Under pressure from the U.K. government, Premier League clubs voted to ban gambling sponsors from the front of playing shirts starting in the 2026-27 season, though logos can still appear on kit sleeves and stadium boards.

Meanwhile, prediction markets—which let people bet on future events—have taken off. In December, prediction-market companies Polymarket and Kalshi oversaw nearly US$12 billion in trades, a 400 percent rise from the previous December. You can bet on almost anything. Last summer, someone cashed out $128,000 after wagering that Israel would strike Iran militarily.

Why does betting now seem to be everywhere?

Gerda Reith is a professor of sociological and cultural studies at the University of Glasgow. It seems so, Reith says, because it is. The phenomenon traces to a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that opened the way for states to legalize online betting. So far, 38 states have done so, with more ready to follow. At the same time, new technologies have transformed the experience: graphics have grown more sophisticated; marketing is personalized; smartphones let people bet on the go; “in-game” betting has accelerated the pace; and by collecting vast amounts of data, betting companies can push losing bettors into overspending.

All of which has fed a cultural shift. With so much money in play, betting companies have moved into new markets—especially sports. Betting has become so thoroughly integrated with sports that many young people now feel they’re expected to bet while watching. And prediction markets have taken betting—or “events contracts”—out of sports and into current affairs …

Gustav Jönsson: How has gambling changed in the U.S. in recent years?

Ben Iwara

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