Betting Odds Sports: Evolution of Online Gambling to Include Trading in Sports Future Bets?

Betting Odds Sports: Evolution of Online Gambling to Include Trading in Sports Future Bets?

By William Spencer
General Online Casino News
The momentum is building in the United States for regulated online gambling and legalized sports gambling. As the two become accepted in the US, a new concept half-jokingly proposed by an ESPN writer may be the hot new game to emerge from legal Internet sports wagering.

Bill Simmons, a columnist for ESPN, suggested that eBay open a market for purchased future sports bets. His idea is that players who have invested in a preseason play on a team to win a championship should have the option to auction off that play as the season progresses and the odds drop (or rise, if the seller is willing to take a loss).

In other words, players could advertise they were selling, say, a ticket that pays $2000 on the New Orleans Saints to win the Super Bowl. It may have only cost $100 to buy that play before the season, but if it's week 14 and the Saints are 12-2, chances are the odds will have gone way down, and a $2000 winner would now cost perhaps $1000.

But, with the advent of online sports gambling, the initial player could sell his option for $500. The seller would get a sure thing, and the purchaser would get better odds than currently available.

A similar concept is being explored at certain games at the sports book at M Casino in Las Vegas. The M will let players bet during a game, moving odds as the game progresses.

"Trading in sports bets could be a lucrative new expansion of sports gambling," says gaming analyst Harold Bond. "Taking advantage of the swift transfer of information and mass market of the Internet offers second-guessers and risk-takers a chance to cash in or get out."

Betting Odds Sports: Evolution of Online Gambling to Include Trading in Sports Future Bets?