Sports (gaming) gambling? You bet ya!

We all know with the recent advances for sports betting nationally that the traditional major sports will be available pretty much wherever you are in the U.S. However, how about those less popular, or maybe even niche, sports/games?

We are going to be examining the legislation across the country in many different interesting areas. Our main focus is on identifying those niche offerings that Las Vegas hasn’t entirely fleshed out yet. Immediately we think about high schools sports, local auto racing, and e-sports as major opportunities to get in early.

When we look at high school sports we see tremendous opportunities. Here in Northwest Ohio we are in a hotbed of “non-collegiate” amateur programs and information is not lacking with the tremendous local news coverage. Even though it looks like most of the states’ currently introduced laws will specifically exclude these games, most are still under intense debate. We will be keeping a close eye on this one, even though we are pretty pessimistic of the prospects of doing it outside of the shadows.

Another area will be local auto racing. There can be huge turnouts at these events, even in the middle of basically no where. The fans of the sport are very in tune with the various racers and teams, a very educated and engaged fanbase that has already catapulted NASCAR to the top of minds of sports bettors. I expect this to be a major area of interest when we look outside of the normal players.

And of particular interest to me will be the advancement of “e-sports” gambling. For those not familiar, this is basically teams or individuals playing video games in a structured and competitive environment for large amounts of cash and swag. The popularity of this offering is exploding under the surface, much to the chagrin of traditional sports fans. They even basically take over the Luxor in Vegas for a few months and have permanent places in other strip casinos. People watch online in crazy numbers and even show up in droves to cross-country events. This one is going to be huge as long as the states don’t overstep.

With sports betting coming out of the gate for these offerings, those of us looking outside of the NFL, NBA, and the like will be very interested which way these go. Knowing the history of sports betting in America, we can expect the usual choruses of “protect the kids!” or “corruption!” or “addiction!”, but it remains to be seen in what ways the state will be able to wrangle the avalanche that is most certainly coming.

Stay tuned as we keep an eye on these stories and more at vicegeek.com