Historicising Sports Gambling

Abstract

Sports gambling has a very long history, evolving with and influencing cultures, classes, genders and races from antiquity until the present. Attempts to ban it have failed, with its problems regularly emerging in new forms. Given the still limited historiography, this chapter adopts a broad-brush, qualitative, socio-historical approach. It focuses on five themes: the change over time in the various sports betting systems, such as lotteries; the changing nature of social networks in terms of sports gambling; anti-gambling attitudes and their importance in shaping legislative attempts to control or suppress it; the changing regulation of sports betting; and the way identities such as class, age and gender impacted on sports gambling.

Citation

Huggins, M. (2023), "Historicising Sports Gambling", McGee, D. and Bunn, C. (Ed.) Gambling and Sports in a Global Age (Research in the Sociology of Sport, Vol. 18), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 11-24. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1476-285420230000018002