It’s Sunday night, and anticipation hangs in the air as people gather around their TVs, hoping their parlay finally hits. But what drives this obsession with sports betting? Is it the adrenaline of watching your favorite player execute a seamless play, the conversation and community that form around the game, or something else — because it surely isn’t the money lost that keeps people gambling. 

In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992. This federal statute had previously limited legal sports betting nationwide. It is now up to the states to sanction, regulate and tax sports betting. States saw an opportunity for tax revenue, and this was well-received by the sports community. Major league sports began shifting their stance on sports betting, seeking to create a more organized way for fans to bet. Since then, 39 U.S. states have legalized sports betting. 

The first step was legalizing betting, but the transformative step was mobilizing it. Typing “sports betting” in the search bar of your phone’s app store will bring forward plenty of options. Apps like DraftKings, FanDuel and PrizePicks are all very popular platforms in the sports betting market right now. Within these apps, you must verify your identity and location to ensure you are within a legal jurisdiction. Bettors can then simply link their bank account and start gambling. 

The ease of betting from personal devices has transformed gambling into an activity driven by instant gratification. You can place a wager moments before a game and have your payout at the end of said game. In fact, many bettors find it helpful to wait until right before kick-off, or tip-off, to catch better odds. 

How did we get from horse racing to college football? 

Betting on sports or an athlete’s performance is nothing new. We all love a good Kentucky Derby race party, especially here in the South where they have been thrown since the early 1900s. Back in the day, betting on the race caused people to be money mad. This culture had everyone wanting to go for gold, believing that winning bets on the Kentucky Derby race was a fast track to wealth. To be honest, putting your paycheck in the hands of a horse seems chaotic but thrilling. Sports betting used to be niche and harder to come by, whereas now it is 24/7 wagering on our smartphones. In recent years, we have expanded our sports betting selection. While it is more common to bet on the NFL, college football and basketball, plenty of gambling also takes place on golf, soccer, UFC and tennis matches. 

Let’s get local

You are open to placing wagers on UT football games, whether on game outcomes, point spreads or total points scored — however, individual player props and live/in-play team props are restricted for Tennessee games. Our NCAA rules prohibit student-athletes, coaches and athletic staff from betting on UT football games. These rules are in place to keep those directly involved in our athletics from compromising the integrity of our competition and to protect players futures. All NCAA divisions have this ban in place. Violating these rules can lead to termination and potential NCAA penalties, and a student-athlete betting on their own team or institution could lose their eligibility. 

As of this month, UT is facing the potential for stricter regulations on on-campus sports betting. In recently proposed legislation, Tennessee lawmakers are pushing to block mobile sports betting apps from operating on the UT campus. I believe this is targeting underage students who live here on campus, since many students living in student housing are below the legal age of gambling. This ban would restrict access to the betting apps within one mile of campus boundaries. 

Fan engagement 

Outsiders call it a gambling addiction — others see it as engaging with the game. Sports betting has turned passive viewers into active ones, and that has been huge for the industry. We are ride or die for our favorite teams, and if you can’t play with them, you might as well bet on them, right? 

Even a small bet can make a game more entertaining to watch. Several studies suggest that engagement increases due to betting. There is obviously a correlation to viewership — people want to see what they put their money on play out, but why does it increase interest? Bettors say that even when losing their wager, it still made the game more enjoyable to watch, because they had a “stake in the fight.” The theory of near misses describes the commotion of almost winning, coming so close to a payout but falling short, can trigger a dopamine response, sometimes stronger than when winning, creating a desire to chase that feeling. This could explain why so many return to the betting game, even after losses.  

The payoff  

Don’t quit your day job. Profits from sports betting are neither long-term nor consistent. According to various studies, you would be lucky to break even, and only about 3% to 5% of bettors are consistently profitable. To reap the rewards of betting, you should not go rogue but rather stick to the strategies of seasoned professionals. Experts claim that people’s instinct is to bet on a team or player’s average, but we should instead consider their median. This allows bettors to still consider the most likely outcome without the heavy outlier impact. In this case, a blowout game could cause a major outlier in a team’s statistics, leading to a thrown-off average. Placing bets based on average performance is now classified as a “rookie mistake.”   

Sports betting has become the main event of the game. It is impossible to deny that we see and hear about betting within our conversations, across social media and now embedded in the live broadcasting commentary throughout games. The U.S. has had to consider this growing interest in gambling and manage the craze through new policies and stricter NCAA regulations. 

Isabell Norman is a freshman at UT this year studying journalism. She can be reached at [email protected].

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