GIVEN THE IMMEDIATE cultural acceptance, rapid media adoption, and near-ubiquity of advertising, it's hard to believe that legal sports betting in the United States is only six years old.
Almost as soon as the floodgates opened, the United States proved to be an ideal breeding ground for the industry. Between major professional sports leagues and college sports programs, it makes sense that a large portion of the more than 330 million citizens of a highly competitive nation are intrigued by sports betting.
Perhaps the hype is a result of it being unavailable for so long, but American sports betting owes much of its current climate to several hundred years of development across the pond.
“America managed to make 200 years of history in six years,” London-based betting industry veteran Matthew Trenhaile told ESPN.
In the United Kingdom, which hosts Saturday's UEFA Champions League final between Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid at London's Wembley Stadium, sports betting was never truly illegal and has therefore always been part of sports culture.
As Europe prepares for its biggest sports betting event of the year, the continental equivalent of the Super Bowl, it's easy to see what the U.S. sports betting industry can learn from Europe amid its own growing problems.
NO DISCUSSION about sports betting in Europe without talking about football, the most popular sport on the continent, and the UEFA Champions League, the highest club competition in this sport.
Across Europe, the sports betting industry had a market size of $33.75 billion in 2023, according to a report by Grand View Research. Within that, soccer accounts for about a third of the sport's market share, and the Champions League final is typically the most bet-on event of the year, according to industry sources.
While sports betting has its place in all European countries, nowhere is it more popular than in the United Kingdom, which “dominated” the revenue share of the European sports betting industry at 34.6%, according to the GVR report.
“How common sports betting is in the United Kingdom is as common as tailgating is in college football in the United States,” said Max Bichsel, executive vice president of North America at Gambling.com Group, a U.S.-founded company that began its business abroad in the mid-2000s. “They are borderline synonymous. You generally don't talk about one without the other.”
The normalization of sports betting in the UK dates back centuries, long before it became the multi-billion dollar industry it is today. Although the practice was technically illegal at times in the country's history, such as under the Unlawful Gaming Act of 1541, restrictions were never strictly enforced and the UK government began seriously regulating sports betting from the early 20th century. .
In those early days, according to Trenhaile, bookmakers went door-to-door collecting fixed-odds bets on upcoming sporting events and then turned to a wealthy client, such as a bar owner, to make a book. Pari-mutual betting, the system in which bettors bet against each other that still operates in American horse racing, has largely disappeared.
The early British systems were largely geared towards one sport in particular, horse racing, and would remain so throughout the Second World War. At that time, soccer began to emerge as a prominent professional sport and quickly “exploded” on the sports betting scene, according to Trenhaile.
This eventually gave rise to betting shops, which to this day grace many corners of British cities. While originally a great place for punters to gather, the rise of internet betting in the mid-2000s has made these brick-and-mortar stores a relic of the past, and they are now largely occupied exclusively by punters. horse races.
“British betting still has its heart in horse racing and fixed odds horse racing,” Trenhaile said. “I think the average odds on a favorite horse are 2-1, and a lot of horses will be 10-1, 20-1, etc. So you're going to lose a lot in that situation, and when you lose a lot and your customer base predominates has been marketing to is the working class man with spare change in his pocket, the UK has gambled a small amount to gain a lot.
Trenhaile and Bichsel noted that the average bet size for UK bettors is notably smaller than for those in the United States. It is estimated between $10 and $20 in the first and $50 and $100 in the second.
The reason behind those numbers comes down to a matter of objective. In the United States, sports betting is largely marketed as an opportunity to make money, while in the United Kingdom it is understood as recreation. Bettors very often invest a small amount of money in a football match for fun, giving rise to the popular phrase “have a flutter”, the namesake of Flutter, one of the most prominent multinational sports betting companies in the world. .
The legacy of horse racing and the largely binary outcomes of football games keep this dynamic alive. For example, Saturday's showdown between Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid sees the latter as a heavy -375 favorite to lift the trophy over the former's +240 odds, according to ESPN BET. Still, Borussia Dortmund attracts the most bets, according to American bookmakers.
Losers are therefore more attractive in European football betting, which, in the spirit of horse racing, places much more emphasis on the idea of betting a little to win a lot. It also places much less emphasis on player prop bets due to the relative lack of betable statistics, unlike American sports which have much more of a superstar effect.
Nowhere was that underdog spirit more evident than in Leicester City's winning run in the Premier League in 2015-16. The historically second-tier club surprisingly went 5,000-1 underdogs to win the league that season, costing UK bookmakers almost $15 million.
“If you think of the Champions League and the Super Bowl as the pinnacle of team competitions, I find it interesting how those two narratives would be very different and the handling of betting in the markets would be very different,” Trenhaile said. “'Mahomes' passing yards' will be one of the top three betting markets on the Super Bowl, while 'whoever scores first' will not be among the top seven betting markets for the Champions League final.”
FOR ALL Despite their differences, the United States and the United Kingdom also share common problems that affect the sports betting industry as a whole.
The first is with advertising, a common complaint among American consumers during the last few years of legalization. Sports betting signs adorn city streets and highways, social networks sell targeted advertisements and, of course, television advertisements during commercial breaks. The latter issue became so prominent that the NCAA banned sports betting commercials during NCAA basketball tournament games ahead of the 2022 event.
In the UK, with a general lack of television adverts during matches, the most prominent way for sportsbooks to advertise was t-shirt sponsorship. During the 2022-23 English Premier League season, eight of the 20 clubs had bookmakers as their main sponsor, and several of those bookmakers were from outside the UK, including many from Asia.
Bichsel points out that this practice also inherently markets sports betting to impressionable sports fans.
“If a kid wants to buy his favorite player's uniform, he probably already has a sports betting ad,” he said.
For all these reasons, the EPL decided to ban sports betting shirt sponsors from the 2026-27 season.
While changes are being made in the advertising space, one troubling aspect of the industry that may never resolve itself is integrity scandals.
Americans are very familiar with this in the legal era with names like Jontay Porter, Ippei Mizuhara and Calvin Ridley. The integrity of sports has been called into question and leagues have responded with significant punishments. But the reality, if history is to be believed, is that scandals will continue to appear.
In 2010, several Pakistani cricketers were banned from the sport and jailed as a result of their “spot-fixing” during their team's tour of England. Much more recently, West Ham midfielder Lucas Paquetá was accused by the English Football Association of violating its betting rules. These incidents come after decades of trying to prevent this type of behavior.
“It all comes down to how well you think you can control greed?” Bichsel said. “It's no different than Wall Street or other industries or politics. Even if someone has an opportunity where they think they can take advantage of something, inevitably not everyone will take advantage of it, but someone will.
“So I don't suspect these scandals are going to stop, but I think the industry is getting a lot better at identifying them.”
Indeed, American bookmakers and governments have begun to crack down on these types of scandals, but realizing that they may never completely stop is one of the lessons the country can learn from its parent nation.
American Integrity already succeeded in the case of the Alabama baseball team, as the bad actors in that case were quickly dealt with, only for an investigation into Temple men's basketball to be opened a month later.
Americans can also learn to view sports betting as a means of entertainment, rather than a money-making venture.
“What happened is that little by little we realized that the demand was always for lottery-style products. Bet a little, win a lot.” Trenhaile said.
Perhaps the American market is already starting to mirror the British one: BetMGM, FanDuel and ESPN BET are all reporting significant year-over-year increases in Champions League handle ahead of Saturday's game.
“Three days before the final, we have already eclipsed the amount of bets we placed on the entire Champions League tournament last year, which certainly speaks to the growing popularity of football on our platform,” said the betting boss. ESPN BET sports, Patrick Jay. “Whether it's the World Cup, the Champions League or the upcoming Euro Cups and Copa América, we are seeing great interest from our users and we have developed our product to meet the demand.”
As Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid prepare to put on a show at the biggest European sports betting event of the year, the United States will also be watching with interest.
