Sports and Gambling: Do they Mix?

Gambling at sports bets is a pastime taken up by millions of people throughout the world on a daily basis. For as many kinds of sports there are in the world, there are just as many types of gambling – from kayak racing up the Nile to three-day cricket tournaments in England. As long as there are two or more spectators taking an interest in that sport, you will have two sides that want their favorites to win – and thus the perfect situation for sports gambling to occur.

Sports and gambling are two mega-million dollar industries and when both are interlinked, the results are astounding. When a passionate soccer fan takes up gambling at his bookmaker and predicts that his team will win the next match, he is in fact bringing the world of sports into the world of gambling. This type of gambling has been taking place for hundreds, if not thousands of years and no amount of resistance by various anti-sports betting groups will be able to remove sports wagering from our midst.

Opponents of sports gambling fear mixing the two industries. They feel that gambling might cause sportsmen or women to ‘fix’ games and thus cause corruption and scandal in the sports world. While there have been cases of this type of thing happening, they are few and far between and sports betting is definitely here to stay.