With the Supreme Court voting 6-3 in May to strike down the federal ban on sports gambling, the door has been opened for individual states across the country to initiate their own legal, government-regulated sports betting industries.
And while it is yet to be seen how many states will legalize sportsbooks and how quickly (ESPN keeps an up-to-date map and list of state progress here), it’s clear that gambling’s influence and nomenclature will be an important part of sports for the foreseeable future, especially in the NFL.
Gambling has long been part of the fabric of professional football, from tantalizing preseason win totals to bizarre Super Bowl proposition bets, all the way down to pseudo-gambling products, like daily fantasy contests.