Official betting is the legal and regulated gambling on sports events that are sponsored or sanctioned by organized leagues. It’s one of the many different types of sports wagering and is usually conducted through a licensed sportsbook or bookmaker, which can accept bets from anyone 21 years of age or older.
Despite the fact that states are most interested in maximizing taxable revenue from sports wagering, they’re also focused on protecting the integrity of games and betting markets. For that reason, most state sports betting laws include provisions to ban betting on games or events that violate the integrity of the sport. These include bribery, match-fixing and the misuse of inside information.
In baseball, for example, the Black Sox Scandal in 1919 was a result of professional gambler Joseph Sullivan paying eight members of the Chicago White Sox to fix the World Series. As a result, the players were banned from baseball forever (although Pete Rose was eventually reinstated a few decades later). The NHL is exploring using advanced statistics like Statcast data in license-approved wagering, and the NBA and MLB are pushing for a uniform betting rule that will be applied across the country.
Some states, including New Jersey and Delaware, got a head start in 2022 by allowing sports betting. West Virginia (sportsbook only) and Mississippi (retail and mobile sports betting) followed shortly after. Ohio’s law went into effect in November 2022 and allows up to 40 sportsbooks. The ten brands that received sports betting licenses included ESPN BET, BetMGM, Q Sportsbook, FanDuel, Caesars Sportsbook, betPARX, and Betfred.