What Happens to Gambling When Sports Shut Down?

Springtime is typically full of so many sporting events that fans find themselves spoiled for choice—March Madness Cinderella runs, playoffs in basketball and ice hockey, the first home runs of baseball season, and the final matches of European soccer. The summer is peppered with major golf and tennis tournaments, the grueling slog of the Tour de France, and, this year, what would have been the Olympics in Japan. The coronavirus pandemic has ended, or postponed, all of this, bringing major sports (and most of the world) to a near standstill. For fans, it has left a yawning hole in their daily routines, but for the gamblers who watch and wager, it is a double blow.

“There are so many things going usually to keep entertained,” Ryan Metivier, a sports bettor who lives outside of Toronto, told me, “and then suddenly, nothing.” Metivier generally gambles on National Football League games and soccer, and some hockey, tennis, and basketball, but the sports