Stock car race driver Richard Petty once said, “Do you know the date of the very first car race? – the day they build the second car!” Along those same lines, we gain insight into the start of sports betting history. In fact, it’s very likely that cavemen were betting nuts and berries on which of them could lift the largest boulder. Fossils suggest to us that early societies 3,000 years ago in Mesopotamia played dice related games, the Chinese are credited with inventing some sophisticated odds for the times, and the first actual documented case of sports betting came from the ancient Greeks who bet on the Olympic games. The Greeks would bet on horse and chariot races, boxing, wresting, discus and more.

As time passed, the Romans turned into big sports fans, and also started betting on events. The Romans especially liked to bet on gladiator battles, where as we know, people often fought to their deaths! The Romans also enjoyed wagering on spectator events like horse racing, and even table games using dice. Throughout the middle ages, and the history of sports betting in general, people bet on small events such as cockfighting. In the 12th century, the first look at modern horse racing began to take shape when British Knights returned from Arabia with their fast stallions.

During the following four hundred years, they started to breed Arabian horses with English mares producing a breed with top speed and strength. Under the reign of Queen Anne, (1701-1714) racetracks started to pop up all over England. There was a lot of competition among the tracks to attract the quickest horses, and therefore the biggest gamblers. Because of this, the sport enjoyed a huge rise in popularity during the beginning of the eighteenth century.

The history of sports betting got a boost in 1750 when the Newmarket Jockey Club began and the first race then took place in 1752. The club introduced a set of rules, and even to this day the club still maintains control over horse racing in England. Horse racing continues to thrive under the Jockey Club, and now horse racing is the second most popular attended sporting event in England.

In America, betting started even before Revolutionary War. While the Puritan groups who settled Pennsylvania and Massachusetts detested gambling, English settlers in other colonies embraced it. In the 18th Century, lotteries became very popular. They were introduced by the privately held Virginia Company of London who sold tickets throughout the Colonies. When the King got word that this company was making a lot of money, he outlawed private lotteries and then introduced a Government run Lottery- a tradition that continues over 200 years later. Ironically enough, lotteries were so popular, the seceding Continental Congress introduced Lotteries as a way to finance the Revolutionary war – lotteries and betting were that popular.

During the start of the eighteenth century, and all during the history of sports betting, the Britsh settlers who had welcomed the lottery also wanted to see their favorite sports from back home, thus horse racing tracks started to pop up along the East Coast, which was the only part of America settled at the time. At first, it was mostly a high-society event, but after the war it became more open to people of all classes, and by the 20′s, horse racing had become so popular that there were more than three-hundred tracks in the USA.

Not shockingly, sports betting history continued to expand, and Americans found other avenues for their betting obsessions. Baseball and boxing became more popular when people started heading to local clubs and bars to watch fights, and to baseball fields when the hardball era came along and made it more accessible to fans.

An event in 1919 changed public perceptions towards sports betting. The heavily favored Chicago White Sox played the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. Before the series began, the White Sox were clear favorites, but as the series drew closer, many more bets came in on the underdog Reds. Rumors swirled that the series was fixed, and by the time the Series began, the odds swung so far that the Reds actually became the favorites. Two White Sox Pitchers, star Left Fielder Shoeless Joe Jackson, and five other key players conspired to lose the series after being paid by gamblers to do so. The players had felt slighted by White Sox owner, Charles Comiskey and purposefully lost the Series as a way to make some extra cash and fire back against what they felt was a cheap team owner. The scandal was soon revealed publicly and the eight guilty players were banned from baseball for life. The scandal largely changed public perception that gambling was a victimless crime.

Rich Allen is an expert in Sports Betting Strategy and has worked for Las Vegas and Atlantic City books. His Sports Betting Professor Systems cover all major sports including horse racing. Download a FREE copy of The Sports Betting Insider’s Guide at: http://richallensports.com/sports-betting-history-of-sports-betting