The pandemic has transformed how we work, study, and entertain ourselves, and has pushed many people to seek out new forms of pleasure and distraction. With the general inaccessibility of social venues like bars, restaurants, and public sporting events, some have dipped their toes into the nebulous world of sports gambling.
Gambling is an exhilarating, yet ephemeral way to spend an evening — and an unequivocally terrible way to spend your money if you are hoping to turn a profit. In my experience, sports betting is one part pitched intoxicating excitement and three parts utter disappointment.
My game of choice in 2020 was wagering on American College Football. Despite never having gambled before, the months-long boredom and disconnect of that year made the prospect enticing. I bought my first PRO•LINE ticket in October 2020 and put $5 down on the minimum three predictions for that Saturday’s games.
I lost my $5 as the Iowa State Cyclones upset the Oklahoma Sooners 37–30, an annual matchup that the Sooners have won 77 times to the Cyclones’ seven. Despite the loss, simply wagering money on the outcome added a certain excitement that had previously been difficult to come by. For one Saturday, I was completely engrossed in the outcome of a game that I otherwise never would have watched. The adrenaline rush alone was worth the $5.
That first bet quickly became a habit, as I marched down to the corner store every Friday until mid-December placing my $5 wager on Saturday’s games. The addictive attraction of sports gambling is not just the emotional investment in a particular game, but the tantalizing plausibility of winning. In theory, correctly picking the outcomes of three matchups hardly seems impossible but proves maddeningly difficult in practice.
Each wager was as disappointing as the last. Yet, the eager anticipation for the next week’s matches remained steady, as did the conviction that I would eventually win money — a mindset that ultimately proved to be misguided.
However, the losses themselves never deterred me, underscoring how starved for excitement people are. While the precautions and restrictions implemented to combat the virus have been necessary, they may also be provoking people to indulge in new habits.
One might compare the world of sports gambling to the astonishing interest others have taken in stock trading, with many amateur traders sinking money into GameStop or Bitcoin. There, as with sports gambling, the objective may be as much adrenaline as it is profit, and the results are perhaps equally uncertain.
