Thanksgiving week is traditionally the busiest week for sports bettors and bookmakers in the United States. This year promises to be even busier, since it’s the first Thanksgiving following the US Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in May this year.
For the first time, sports fans in several states are being offered the opportunity to wager legally in a regulated industry, thanks to changes that their governments made to legislation, following the ruling. These states include Delaware, New Jersey, Mississippi, West Virginia, New Mexico and Pennsylvania.
According to an article that appeared in Forbes Magazine, the TV ratings for the Thanksgiving Monday Night game were the highest in more than four years as fans tuned in to watch. The article noted that NFL ratings have been sluggish in recent years and “while some members of the media will attribute the upswing to more scoring, thanks to rules changes, it’s likely not a coincidence that, with the recent Supreme Court ruling, more people are betting on the games legally and watching more of the action on all the various broadcasting and online platforms.”
What is interesting to note is that the biggest growth segment of the sports betting industry is in-game wagering, where players can wager on selected plays and propositions during the course of the game. It is expected that many more states will legalize mobile sports betting in the years to come.
