The History Of Sports Betting: The Early Years
Stock car race driver Richard Petty once said, “Do you know the date of the very first car race? – the day they build the second car!” Along those same lines, we gain insight into the start of sports betting history. In fact, it’s very likely that cavemen were betting nuts and berries on which of them could lift the largest boulder. Fossils suggest to us that early societies 3,000 years ago in Mesopotamia played dice related games, the Chinese are credited with inventing some sophisticated odds for the times, and the first actual documented case of sports betting came from the ancient Greeks who bet on the Olympic games. The Greeks would bet on horse and chariot races, boxing, wresting, discus and more.
The Romans whom of course were big sports fans already, started betting on events such as gladiator fights, but they also bet on horse racing and even table games. All through the history of sports betting, and in the middle ages people all over Europe bet on small local events like cockfighting, it really wasn’t until the twelfth century that horse racing took shape when the English Knights returned from Arabia with their fast stallions.
Over the next 400 years, the Arabian horses were bred with English mares and produced a horse breed with superior speed and endurance. Under the reign of Queen Anne, 1701-1714, racetracks for people to bet on the ponies sprung up all over England. Fierce competition amongst the tracks was waged to attract the fastest horses, and hence the biggest bettors, and the sport enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity during the first half of the 18th century.
The history of sports betting got a boost in 1750 when the Newmarket Jockey Club began and the first race then took place in 1752. The club introduced a set of rules, and even to this day the club still maintains control over horse racing in England. Horse racing continues to thrive under the Jockey Club, and now horse racing is the second most popular attended sporting event in England.
In America, betting started even before Revolutionary War. While the Puritan groups who settled Pennsylvania and Massachusetts detested gambling, English settlers in other colonies embraced it. In the 18th Century, lotteries became very popular. They were introduced by the privately held Virginia Company of London who sold tickets throughout the Colonies. When the King got word that this company was making a lot of money, he outlawed private lotteries and then introduced a Government run Lottery- a tradition that continues over 200 years later. Ironically enough, lotteries were so popular, the seceding Continental Congress introduced Lotteries as a way to finance the Revolutionary war – lotteries and betting were that popular.
Throughout the history of sports betting, and particularly the beginning of the 18th century, the British settlers who had embraced the lottery wanted to see their favorite sports teams from home, and horse race tracks started to appear on the East coast of the US. The east was the only part of the United State that was settled at that time. At the start of the century, horse racing was mostly an upper class event, however, after the Civil war, it became more democratic and it’s popularity grew throughout society. By the 1920′s, it had become so popular that there were then over three-hundred tracks in the country; wagering took place at both the tracks and at official off-site facilities.
It’s not surprising that the history of sports betting grew and changed, and people in the USA found other ways to express their wagering interests. Professional boxing and hard baseball become more popular as locals headed to clubs to watch fights and to the local fields to watch baseball games.
In 1919, a major event change the way the public looked at sports wagering. This event? The World Series! The Chicago White Sox (the favorites) played the Cincinnati Reds. Before the series even started, the Sox were the top dogs, but as the game drew closer, a lot more bets were placed on the Reds (the underdogs.) Rumors started to spread that the game was fixed, and by the time it began the odds were sung so far, that Cincinnati became the new favorite! “Shoeless Joe Jackson”, a white sox pitcher, and give other players got together and planned to lose the series on purpose after being paid by bettors to do so. These guys felt slighted by then White Sox owner, Charles Comiskey, so they lost the series on purpose to make some extra money and fire back at Comiskey. The entire drama was announced to the public, and the eight players involved were banned from baseball for the rest of their lives. Understandably, this changed the perception that betting was a harmless crime.
Rich Allen is an expert in Sports Betting Strategy and has worked for Las Vegas and Atlantic City books. His Sports Betting Professor Systems cover all major sports including horse racing. Download a FREE copy of The Sports Betting Insider’s Guide at: http://richallensports.com/sports-betting-history-of-sports-betting
