NPR.

This is the indicator from Planet Money.

I'm Waylon Wong.

And I'm Derryam Woods.

The FIFA Men's World Cup is expected to be the biggest sports betting event ever.

And around the world, sports gambling has a long history that goes back millennia, all the way back to ancient Olympic games in Greece.

Spectators at horse races in England and France have been betting since the 17th century.

And it's been legal in many countries for decades.

In the U.S., though, sports gambling was essentially illegal until 2018.

Other than Nevada and a handful of other places. Right, always Nevada. Then in 2018,

a Supreme Court decision allowed states to legalize this kind of betting. But David Vakino

has his own take about how long gambling has been a part of American sports. He's the author

of the new book, Over Under, an unexpected history of sports betting. If you look back,

betting and wagering and the people who placed bets were basically at the beginning of nearly

every single American sport, league, and competition that we have.

They were the first ones to show up.

David argues that gambling is not something that grew out of American sports.

It's actually the other way around.

Collegiate and professional sports in the U.S.

exist in their current form because of gambling.

Today on the show, David makes his case that the American love of wagering fueled the rise

of professional sports, and he tells us how he views the current boom in gambling.

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