The legalisation of sport betting in the United States

Coming from the UK it is easy to forget that not every country has the same legal status for football betting as ours does.

We’ve touched upon it in some of our articles on betting in specific countries before; for example our look at Ugandan bookmakers or Italian bookmakers. We never covered USA though.

Luckily NJgames put the effort into creating this really useful infographic, which I will summarise below if the image doesn’t load correctly or you need it translated.

Infographic showing the legalisation of sports betting in the United States

Infographic showing the legalisation of sports betting in the United States

Some of the key points for me where:

The brief chronological timeline

  • October 1992 – Sports betting is prohibited nationwide under PASPA (Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act).
  • March 2009 – New Jersey State Senator Raymond Lesniak and others suit over PASPA
  • November 2011 – New Jersey voters pass a referendum supporting legal sports betting at racetracks and casinos.
  • August 2012 – Lots of sport leagues (NFL, NBA etc) file suit to try and block the state implementing sports betting on pro and college games.
  • September 2013 – The 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals sides with the leagues in a 2-1 decision.
  • October 2014 – New Jersey passes legislation to decriminalise sports betting at racetracks and casinos. The leagues file suit again.
  • August 2016 – The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals again rules in favour of the sports leagues. New Jersey takes the appeal to the US Supreme Court.
  • May 2018 – The US Supreme Court rules that PASPA is unconstitutional and gives individual states the right to decide on legal sports betting within their state.

Some stats from the infographic

  • $41.2 Billion is the expected total economic output of folk betting in the US
  • $4 Billion is the expected direct labour income that sports betting will generate
  • $7 Billion is the expected indirect labour income that it would generate
  • Over 200,000 jobs will be created, either directly or indirectly

It is worth noting that in the states all the same types of betting happen, including things like asian sportsbooks.

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