How Sports Betting Turns Fans Against Their Favourite Teams

Whereas in the past there was only one’s favourite team, today’s sports fans monitor multiple pick-up teams on a number of platforms. Granular water-cooler talk is now peppered with happy discussions of how Aaron Judge or Connor McDavid racked up a big night against your sentimental childhood squad. The notion of absolute fandom was shattered forever. And it's not coming back.

Just in time for the Alberta Referendum vote the province has become the second Canadian province to allow licensed online sports betting. Except you can't bet on politics under the new rules. Ontario does allow political betting in the country's only other legalized betting province. Why? It's complicated.

It's early days for Alberta's sports betting, but suffice to say with the NFL cranking up next week there should be plenty of action from the over 40 licensed sites. The popularity of licensed betting will still be in the guilty-pleasure category for a while. But the problems with gambling-- you must be over 18 in Alberta-- will raise their hands soon after. Offshore betting and provincial sports lotteries have been around for years, but being able to bet a game from your sofa is a new frontier.

There has also been Fantasy sports betting for a while, too. This week will see NFL pools do their drafts from amateurs to algorithms used to win glory and money. NFL Fantasy leagues are also prodigious as the fall season approaches. No doubt NHL fans will likewise parse their sport for fantasy purposes in postseason pools as well. All geared to enhancing watching your favourite sports through the championship season.

As we wrote in March, https://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com/i-dont-like-mondays/2026/3/9/bg47fwomj76yrbl6lalw6f7hau15kd the Fantasy sports phenomenon has re-invented how sports is perceived and consumed by North Americans fans. From a diversion for sports nerds to enhance their fandom it has grown to today’s multi-billion-dollar legal sports betting universe than blankets the broadcasts and dominates the internet.

Where in the past there was only one’s favourite team, today’s sports fans monitor multiple pick-up teams on a number of platforms. Granular water-cooler talk is now peppered with happy discussions of how Aaron Judge or Connor McDavid racked up a big night against your sentimental childhood squad. The notion of absolute fandom was shattered forever. Insider information became the lingua franca.

The revolution began shortly after Roto sports became a cult hit in the 1980s. Soon, the rules and regulations governing Fantasy were heard at dinner parties and dives. Everyone from judges to Wall Street hustlers to Hollywood luminaries was in on it. “Who’s your No. 1 draft pick, Bonds or Maddux?” 

While gambling had always existed in the criminal underground and in above-board NCAA basketball pools, the appetite grew for the middle-class sports fan to profit from his/ her obsessive appetite for sports. But outside of Las Vegas, there was no legal sports gambling in North America. (Europe and Asia have long had legal sports gambling)

Leagues mortified at the thought of games being fixed pressured Congress and Parliament to halt any incursions into using their results for gambling. The first major attempts to successfully circumvent this monolith were quasi-betting pools such as Draft Kings and FanDuel who created daily “pools” where fans could assemble teams for that day. Winners were based on one-day production. Prize pools were divided among winners.

The formula spread to just about every sport from golf to auto racing to soccer. Algorithms based on successful business investing schemes were developed. The sports TV networks noticed. Soon, there were shows dedicated strictly to the craft and culture of “who is my backup third baseman” or what prospects were on the horizon for wily GMs to pick from.

The networks did not go so far as to insert any of this into their coverage of games live, of course. It was all euphemisms and wink-wink from folks such as Al Michaels or Brent Musberger. While the pressure to make sports gambling legal in the U.S. and Canada built steadily though court cases and government bills, they played hear no evil/ see no evil. Like Pravda or Tass they were censoring the reality everyone saw around them.

But stalling was a losing proposition. The leagues they covered saw an obscene amount of profit from pairing with the corporations that ran gambling. The advent of proposition betting further primed the pump. Needing money to pay the sky-rocketing price of superstar talent teams and leagues saw arms-length gambling as a solution. Don’t take money from betting, Take it from there people who run betting. 

Early in the century the dam finally broke for gambling with Supreme Court decisions that paved the way for, now, 40 American states to allow sports betting. Of them 32 allow online or apps for betting.

Thus, online touts and info are blanketing sports content with pop-up odds or banner ads running under the action itself. Traditionalists are horrified by this incursion, but it’s clear there’s no getting this tooth paste back in the betting tube. As seen by the high-profile cases of Shohei Ohtani’s translator or the point-shaving of former Toronto Raptors this has also not made sports gambling foolproof. 

But it’s too late now. Newer sites such as Kalshi and Prophet X allow you to bet on any prop or sport. Dedicated betting internet sites go 24/7 to guide live in-game betting. Cash-strapped governments needing tax revenues are opening up the sluice gates.

“Root-root-root for the home team”? Never going back.