Since the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the ban on sports gambling in 2018, sports betting has infiltrated the country — and fast.
Sports gambling is now legal in nearly 40 states, and ads for the different sportsbooks are all over social and traditional media. Even ESPN — the sports brand of the children-friendly Walt Disney Company (DIS) -) — already opened its own sportsbook after rebranding the Barstool Sportsbook to ESPN Bet.
But while there are active efforts to curb the degenerate gamblers, there has been a reported rise in calls to these gambling hotlines as the accessibility of betting is as easy as a few clicks on the a smartphone.
The sheer volume of things to bet on, no matter how silly, also offers an enticing proposition for gamblers.
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DraftKings (DKNG) -), which is one of the top two most popular sportsbooks in the country together with FanDuel, is offering one bet that shows just how far some people will go to place a bet.
The app is currently allowing users to place bets on a player who scores a touchdown in Super Bowl LVIII — even if the National Football League playoffs have not yet started, 14 teams remain alive in the standings, and the Super Bowl itself is still a month away.
The bets are for a "Super Bowl Anytime Touchdown Scorer," which means gamblers can bet on a player to score a touchdown at any point during the Super Bowl, and "Super Bowl First Touchdown Scorer," which bets that a player will score the first touchdown of the entire final match.
Colin Salao
These bets include players from all 14 remaining teams — and the app says "all bets action" meaning the bet will still hold even if the player does not make the Super Bowl.
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Bettors are not only betting on whether there player scores, but that the player's team wins all its playoff games to make it to the Super Bowl. That means two wins for the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens players — who no surprise have the lowest odds — and three for players of every other team.
This may not be the weirdest bet that any of these major sportsbooks have offered — some of these sportsbooks allow you to offer on sports like the World Putting League. But it's definitely another indication that sportsbooks are getting more and more creative with ways to entice people to place bets.
So as long as people are placing them, it doesn't seem like this is going to stop anytime soon.
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