Delaware, Nevada, Oregon, and Montana are the only four states in America which have state laws regulating sports betting, according to Chad Millman of ESPN.
Chad Millman's Sports Betting Story
In 1992, a national law was passed, outlawing sports betting. The law was given a generic title, the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act. This Act specifically prohibited bookmaker, which should not be confused with bookkeeping.
Bookmakers, "bookies," as they're often called, manage numerous bets. These bets are normally based on sporting events but a lot of people can even find bookies to bet on Oscar and Emmy Award winners. Bookies have to seek out a multitude of participants in order to balance out their bets and make money.
These bets normally deal with "odds," or chances for a certain team or player to accomplish a said goal. Commonly, one would place a bet on a team to emerge victorious and bookies lure people into betting on the less-favorable team, the "underdog," to win the game against the favorite.
Another common form of gambling deals with what people refer to as "sports cards." They're not actually cards - a lot of times they're printed on the same material used for sales receipts. Participants would pick 'x' amount of teams to win each week and the more teams a person bets on to win, the more money they would receive. Here's the catch, though: if a participant bet on the favored team, that team would have to win by a certain amount of points, they would have to "cover the spread."
For example, when the Buffalo Bills played the Pittsburgh Steeler two weeks ago, the Bills were actually favored to defeat the Steelers. Their "spread" was calculated by the bookie at a value of -3, which means 3 points are deducted from Buffalo's final score and if they still had a higher score than Pittsburgh afterward, Buffalo will have been a winning bet. Another catch is that if the final score ends up tying, (if Buffalo won by exactly 3 points) then the result will have been considered a tie and I wouldn't have been paid because ties result in a lost bet. Furthermore, if I were to bet on the underdog, that team simply needed to win in regulation - most bookies don't include overtime.
All in all, sports gambling was a lot more complex before the creation of Fantasy Sports. It is also a lot easier to control your odds of winning with Fantasy Sports because participants literally "draft" players for their team. So, if someone were to have done multiple hours of research and studied a variety of different pre-season and off-season progress of certain players - that participant would have a much better chance at winning.
There are no odds. There are no loopholes for bookies to hide behind. There is a clear-cut way of winning and that is to make the Fantasy Sports playoffs and emerge victorious over your opponent for that particular week.
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