CNN
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Welcome to Trendlines, your weekly installment of what’s trending up and what’s trending down in the world of sports.
This week, we’re talking about the biggest change to sports fandom in the last decade and arguably this century: Gambling.
It’s a topic that is at the top of the news now because of a provision in President Donald Trump’s recently passed “big, beautiful bill,” which could be detrimental to professional gamblers in the way that it taxes losses.
Indeed, there is a lot on the line whenever we talk about sports gambling. Betting on sports has gone from the back rooms to appearing seemingly everywhere on your television and computer screen.
Americans can’t get enough, and legal gambling one of the most profitable industries.
Just how profitable is it?
Let’s start with the money of it all.
Trending up – Legal gambling: Up $13 billion from 2017
It used to be that Nevada was the only place you could legally gamble on sports. That was the case all the way through 2017. Nevada properties raked in about $260 million in revenue that year. Bettors placed about $5 billion in bets.
Then came 2018. Thanks to a Supreme Court decision, Nevada wasn’t the only game in town. The floodgates were open, and now sports betting has become legal in the vast majority of the country.
The result is that legal sports gambling revenue shot up 50-fold to nearly $14 billion last year, with about $150 billion gambled overall.
The betting has been a boon to local governments, as well. We’re talking billions in taxes.
A place like New York, which wasn’t known for sports gambling outside of betting on the ponies, has been the biggest winner. There was over $2 billion in gross revenue and over a billion in taxes brought in during 2024 alone.
Trending up – Approval of professional sports gambling: Up 17 points from 1993
I can remember when “sports betting” might as well have been a four-letter word. We were coming off the Pete Rose scandal back in the early 1990s. Rose had, of course, bet on the game he played so well.
Just 41% of Americans said in 1993 that it should be legal to bet on professional sports. The clear majority, 58%, disagreed.
Today, the numbers have flipped. The 58% majority now say that professional sports gambling should be legal in their state.
This is what I meant earlier on when I said that sports gambling can now be in the open. A big reason it can be in the open is because the American people accept it.
It might also be a reason that there has clearly been some backlash against the provision in the “big, beautiful bill” that is harmful to gamblers.
Trending down – Those who think gambling encourages college athletes to cheat: Down 25 points from 1985
The big problem with players betting on sports is that they may change the way they play if they place a wager. Maybe a pitcher throws a pitch in the dirt. Maybe a basketball player shaves points (e.g. misses shots when the team is way ahead).
Athletes have been accused of or found guilty of doing both of these. We’re talking about the integrity of the game.
One of the biggest shifts since the time of Rose is that far fewer Americans are worried about this potential problem. Although 70% of Americans said that they believed betting encouraged college players to cheat in 1985, a mere 45% said they did by 2022.
Will this percentage shift as we hear about more players attached to gambling? Maybe.
I’d argue that is the biggest budding issue with gambling. Even more so than a “big, beautiful bill.”