Super Bowl reflects rift between legal, illegal sports gambling
By Howard Stutz, Las Vegas Review-Journal
The Carolina Panthers didn’t exist and Peyton Manning was in high school when Congress halted expansion of legal sports wagering in the U.S. in 1992.
The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act allowed Nevada’s sports book industry to continue along with small stakes sports wagering in Oregon, Delaware and Montana.
As for stopping illegal sports betting, the 24-year-old law has been an abysmal failure. Unregulated sports gambling has grown, expanded and thrived.
The American Gaming Association estimates U.S. citizens illegally wagered $149 billion on sports last year through off-shore betting websites and illegal bookmakers.
