Official betting is a form of legal gambling in which players place bets on the outcome of a sporting event. When a bet is successful, the bettor receives a payout. There are many different types of sports bets, including moneyline bets, spread bets, and totalizators. A totalizator is a type of bet that calculates the odds in real-time, taking into account the amount of money that has been placed on each possible outcome. The more money that is bet on a particular outcome, the lower the odds will become.

The NFL is the most popular sports league in the USA, with hordes of Kansans rooting on their hometown team, the Kansas City Chiefs. However, the NFL has never taken a public position on sports betting. The NHL is less concerned about the issue, with Commissioner Gary Bettman saying that they are smaller than the NBA and NFL and therefore less susceptible to problems arising from sports betting.

In 1919, professional gambler Joseph Sullivan paid eight members of the Chicago White Sox to fix a World Series game against the Cincinnati Reds. The scandal would go down as one of the biggest in baseball history. Those players were permanently banned from MLB after the scandal.

In 2022, sports betting launched in Iowa, with multiple sites beginning to take bets that summer. The state law allows betting on pro and college games. The only restriction is that betting on in-state collegiate games, including player prop bets, is prohibited.