Five years and one ferocious gaming-industry lobbying push later, 36 states and Washington, D.C., have joined Nevada in doing exactly that. The convention slowly began to erode as fantasy sports became popular in the 2000s, but the real turning point came in 2018, when a Supreme Court decision cleared the way for states to legalize sports gambling. For decades, the NFL forbade the networks airing its games from even discussing point spreads. Betting won.įor much of the modern history of professional sports, even the vaguest acknowledgments that some viewers might be interested in games for reasons other than a pure-hearted love were largely verboten. Gaming companies sponsor television coverage, put their names on arenas, operate sportsbooks in stadiums, and partner with teams. Betting, once completely excluded from mainstream sports, is now inextricable from nearly every level of the business. The partnership, which will lead ESPN and its talent to promote the sportsbook on its television networks, website, and smartphone apps, cements a transformation that would have seemed all but impossible even five years ago. This fall, in a 10-year, $2 billion deal with the gaming company Penn Entertainment, the most powerful sports-media company in the United States by a wide margin will launch its own digital sportsbook, ESPN Bet. Yesterday afternoon, ESPN made an announcement that was both unprecedented and expected. The sports-betting boom shows few signs of slowing.

Much of the same is true in the dozens of other states that have legalized mobile sports betting, and gambling is even inescapable in the places where you can’t do it: Frank discussion of betting odds and point spreads has become a marquee feature of sports media, where the topic had long been forbidden. Advertisements for gaming apps had blanketed virtually every surface of the city as soon as their use had become legal. Signing up for a new DraftKings account got me a $100 free bet, and I put it on the Bengals moneyline. When I saw Burrow’s outfit, I knew what to do immediately, even though I’d never really contemplated betting on sports before. That man is not losing a football game today, I thought to myself.

I had successfully ignored all of them until I saw Joe Burrow, the quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals, walk into Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City for the AFC Championship game wearing a sherpa coat, black turtleneck, huge gold chain, and rimless sunglasses. It was late January 2022, and mobile-gaming apps had become legal in New York only a few weeks earlier.

There’s no such thing as a smart sports bet, but the first one I ever made was, by any measure, particularly stupid.

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