With casinos having expanded to most of the United States, and international markets more uncertain than certain, the next major frontier for gambling expansion seems to be sports betting. The American Gaming Association is now making major push for the broader legalization and regulation of sports betting, while professional sports leagues, the bulwark of past opposition to legal sports betting, are softening their stances. As we stand at the cusp of a historic expansion of legal sports gambling, Arne Lang’s new history of sports betting and bookmaking is an essential read.
Lang starts with his description of how betting on horses, dogs, and people developed with a look a Leonard Jerome, who more than anyone else was responsible for making thoroughbred racing a mainstream sport throughout the United States. That is the entry point into an examination of the racing scene in New York City, which for much of the second half of the 19th century dominated American racing. Lang artfully recreates that racing milieu.
Professional bookmaking flowered in Gilded Age and in early Progressive New York, and much of current race and sports betting traces its lineage to the innovations of those days. Lang traces the sequential development of what we would today call peer-to-peer wagering, pool-selling, bookmaking, and pari-mutuel betting.
Initially, horse backers bet with each other. Bettors typically owned or had some connection to the horse they backed. Next, pool selling allowed sellers to conduct an auction; the highest bid got the favored horse, next highest the next favored, and so on. Then bookmakers set odds for each horse and accepted bets from the general public. Finally, pari-mutuel machines, which debuted in the United States in 1871, mechanically calculated the correct payouts to winning bettors, minus a commission for the operator.
Lang also chronicles the growth of off-track betting, taking it from the late 19th century “pool room” to later OTB establishments and the race and sports books of Las Vegas. Betting away from the track (or stadium) was an important element of contest wagering, since it broadened the participation base; to get action, bettors did not have to spend a day at the track, but could merely stop in an urban pool room to catch a telegraphed description of a race and, of course, lay down some bets.
There have always been opponents of betting on races and sporting contests. Lang tracks how anti-gambling crusaders, from Anthony Comstock to William Travers Jerome to Fiorello LaGuardia to Estes Kefavuer, enjoyed (often temporary) triumphs that drove betting underground.
Due to a variety of factors, for all of which Lang gives ample consideration, team sports betting began to displace horse race betting in popularity in the second half of the 20th century. Lang tracks the rise of point spread betting on football and basketball and the general upswing in sports gambling, up to and including the very recent skyrocketing (and fall to earth) of daily fantasy sports and New Jersey’s challenge of PASPA.
This is an important book to read now because of the rising importance of sports betting to casinos. From a revenue standpoint, sports books are minor contributors: Nevada casinos get about two percent of their total gaming win from sports betting. But, as noted above, industry leaders now perceive sports betting to be the new frontier for American gaming companies. So for the next several years, expect sports betting news to dominate media coverage and gaming conferences. Reading Lang’s brief, well-written history will give you a better appreciation for all of the dynamics in play with the fight to legalize sports betting, as well as the role of race and sports betting in American life.
Lang’s book succeeds at telling the story of sports betting and bookmaking’s history in an accessible, readable way, and includes several hard-won nuggets of information that will come as a welcome surprise to even the best-versed historians of sports betting. Most importantly, Lang puts developments in sports betting history into the larger social, political, and cultural context of their time, demonstrating that nothing happens in a vacuum.
With football season just upon us, expect even more scrutiny of our national sports betting policy (or lack thereof). Having read Sports Betting and Bookmaking will give you much better insights into that debate.
Sports Betting and Bookmaking: An American History (July 2016, 291 pages with glossary, index) is published by Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, Maryland). ISBN 978-1442265530
