Introduction: Towards a Sociology of Sports Gambling

In 2017, British gambling firm, bet365, released an advert featuring celebrity actor and ‘brand ambassador’, Ray Winstone, walking through a dimly lit snooker hall, with a smartphone in hand, as a maze of holographic pop-ups display live scores, statistics and betting odds. Spliced between cutaway scenes featuring a diverse cast of sports fans similarly fixated on their smartphone in a wide range of everyday locales – including a pub, a barber shop, a restaurant and a beach – Winstone triumphantly heralds the coming of a global age of sports gambling:

Terraformed by rapid innovations in the digital economy and the mass market democratisation of access to the smart technologies, this so-called ‘gamblification’ of sport has seen a new wave of online betting companies – including bet365, which was founded in 2000 – invest in the strategic alignment of their brands with culturally valued sports teams, competitions, athletes and media (Bunn et al., 2018, pp. 1–12; Deans, Thomas, Daube, & Deverensky, 2017; Lopez-Gonzalez & Griffiths, 2018; McGee, 2020; Nyemcsok et al., 2018; Pitt, Thomas, Bestman, Stoneham, & Daube, 2016). In keeping with Winstone's claims of global connection, this distinctly techno-capitalist turn has seen the act of sports betting promoted and rationalised as an entertainment form which extends fan engagement and amplifies the cultural salience of sport not merely as a competitive pursuit but as a vehicle for speculative modes of consumptive ‘play’.