Money for nothing and kicks for free? – Aspects of the long-term relationship between sport and gambling in Britain.

The intention here is to trace the development of the sport-gambling nexus in Britain from the early-nineteenth to the late-twentieth century. An overview of this kind facilitates an understanding of a relationship that has often been characterized as symbiotic. Over the long run, as Britain has transitioned from a pre-industrial to an industrial and then to a post-industrial society, the relationship between sport and gambling has remained intact. In particular, it survived a long period between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries when the ideological hegemony of amateurism in British sport predisposed governing bodies to view gambling with suspicion and even, at times, hostility. The article draws extensively on recent published research into the history of sport in Britain and outlines key developments in the relationship between particular sports and gambling, notably cricket, football, horseracing, greyhound racing and pedestrianism. Recent changes related to the advent of online gambling are identified and briefly discussed, with particular reference to cricket.

Zusammenfassung: In diesem Beitrag wird die Verbindung zwischen Sport und Glücksspiel in Großbritannien in ihrer Entwicklung vom frühen 19. bis zum späten 20. Jahrhundert nachgezeichnet. Ein solcher Überblick dient dem Verständnis einer Wechselbeziehung, die oft als symbiotisch bezeichnet wurde. Während sich Großbritannien von einer vorindustriellen zu einer industriellen und dann zu einer postindustriellen Gesellschaft transformierte, blieb die Beziehung zwischen Sport und Wetten bzw. Glücksspiel intakt. Sie hat auch die lange Periode zwischen der Mitte des 19. und der Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts überdauert, als die Sportverbände Glücksspielen aufgrund der ideologischen Hegemonie des Amateurgedankens mit Misstrauen, zeitweise sogar Feindseligkeit begegneten. Der Artikel stützt sich weitgehend auf neuere Forschungen zur Geschichte des Sports in Großbritannien und skizziert die wichtigsten Entwicklungen im Verhältnis von Sport und Glücksspiel am Beispiel ausgewählter Sportdisziplinen, vor allem von Cricket, Fußball, Pferderennen, Windhundrennen und Geher-Wettbewerben über lange Strecken (pedestrianism). Auch die Veränderungen der jüngeren Zeit im Zusammenhang mit dem Aufkommen von Online-Sportwetten werden erläutert und kurz erörtert, wobei ein besonderer Schwerpunkt auf Cricket gelegt wird.

Keywords: Großbritannien; Glücksspiel; Sportwetten; Korruption; Britain; Sports; Gambling; Betting; Corruption

For social and cultural historians, one of the most compelling advantages of sport as a focus for research is its liminality. Its meanings are expressed not simply through the institutions that sport creates, but "in the spaces between them", for example, in the family, the neighbourhood, the park and the pub ([5]: 4). The long-standing relationship between sport and gambling suggests that we might usefully explore other spaces of this kind, especially the racecourse, the dog track and the betting shop, where people in Britain were drawn together by the impulse to participate in sport by gambling. We have two objectives here. The first is to survey the extensive body of historical literature on the relationship between sport and gambling. The second is to use this material to illustrate the way in which the sports-gambling nexus developed as sport transitioned from pre-modernity to modernity in the nineteenth century before emerging in the twentieth as a highly regulated form of commercialized entertainment. We will also identify some changes occurring in the last thirty years or so which have seen the sports product in Britain, as it has been elsewhere, subject to intensified commercialization in an economic climate transformed by new media and digital technology.

Sport and gambling developed in parallel, with changes in one impacting on the other. In explaining their relationship, however, it is important to recognize that the phases of development indicated here are not so tightly defined as to exclude exceptions to the general rule. The periodization adopted aligns broadly with Holt's Sport and the British in relation to the transition from "old ways of playing" to modern forms of sport but remains open to the idea that continuities are as important as discontinuities. "To understand how far things did not change is just as important as understanding the extent to which they did" ([13]: 3). This is especially important in surveying a relationship that sometimes assumes a quality of permanence. Gambling, it has been suggested, "has always been a part of the modern sporting world ([27]: 59) and horseracing has been largely defined by its "permanent association with gambling" ([39]: 215).

The histories of sport and gambling in Britain are inextricably linked yet there is an imbalance in the historical literature. As Laybourn (2007: vi) noted some years ago, "[there] are a large number of publications on sports but the incidental topic of gambling is much less well covered." Certainly, gambling has rarely been given systematic consideration in broad-based histories of British sport, but this is not to say that the "incidental" observations available to us lack insight. Colls' recent study of the relationship between sport and liberty conveys an astute awareness of betting on horseracing as a robust tradition engaged in by high-born and low-born alike. "In this great national liking for a flutter", he claims, "everybody knew the Derby winner, the jockey, and maybe the trainer, if not the owner"; it was one of the ways in which free-born Englishmen felt at liberty to express themselves in the mid-nineteenth century ([3]: 224-225). There is, perhaps, much to be said for approaching the sport-gambling relationship from the other direction. "Betting's historiography is fairly substantial", Huggins (2007: 284) observed, before going on to namecheck [1], [2] and [29] amongst others.

It was Munting who first explored gambling in Britain from the perspective of business history. Given persistent criticism from those who regarded it as morally dubious, it seemed curious, not only that gambling had survived, but that it had thrived as a commercial venture. "Nowhere outside the British Isles did the entrepreneur of gambling so prosper" ([29]: 67). This points in the direction of recent research into sports-related entrepreneurship which has helped to clarify the nature of the business relationship between sport and gambling. As Vamplew (2018b: 194) has noted: "Sport and gambling can work well together: having a bet can add to the excitement of the event, and the unpredictability of sport can create a lively betting market." Yet, though this has brought mutual benefits, the interests of sport and gambling have not always coincided. For sport, the most obvious benefits, aside from the revenue streams that gambling generates, have been related to keeping its house in order. "Many sports actually owe their origins to gambling or had their first rules established because of the wagering involved" ([40]: 667). There was, however, a potential risk in that the connection brought with it an increased risk of corruption as gamblers sought a competitive edge in betting markets. Fixing the outcome of sporting events "is probably as old as organized sport" ([19]: 130).

The discussion that follows is organized chronologically to facilitate a sense of the relationship between sport and gambling evolving over the long run from the early-nineteenth to the late-twentieth century. It does not seek to cover all sports but focuses instead on those where the connection with gambling is strong and has attracted the attention of historians. Nor does it seek to cover all forms of gambling. This is not to deny that gaming, lotteries and raffles have helped to shape the the environment within which sports-related gambling has operated.

By the mid-nineteenth century Bell's Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, first published in 1822, had established itself as "the voice of the sporting community, an authority on most games, and the main advertising medium for challenge matches of all kinds" ([36]: 20). By mid-century it was reaching readers up to 400 miles from London within 24 hours of publication, its success in this respect testifying to the emergence of a national demand for useful sporting intelligence. From the outset, Bell's Life aimed to meet the requirements of readers who bet on horses, claiming to provide "the only accurate account of the present state of betting in the great stakes [races] to come as received from Tattersall's for this paper exclusively." This reference to Tattersall's – the upmarket London betting rooms established in 1789 where the horseracing fraternity gathered – underpinned its claim to be "a true guide to the Speculation of the Turf" (Bell's Life, 1 April 1822). Its coverage of horseracing in particular, but also cricket, prizefighting and "pedestrianism" (running and walking), pointed to the existence of a vibrant sporting culture inextricably linked with gambling.

Sports-related gambling in its simplest form – a contest for stake money between rival competitors – provided the rationale for many of the activities that comprised sport before the mid-nineteenth century. In cricket, challenge matches between two teams agreeing to play on agreed terms, each having raised its share of an agreed stake, was a long-established practice. Effectively, players backed their own team to win, though this did not preclude the making of other bets. Lord Frederick Beauclerk, a member of the prestigious Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in the mid-1820s, supplemented his income by £600 annually, "through stakes in matches in which he played [...] together with wagers on the same" ([7]: 162). Betting in connection with pedestrianism developed along similar lines when matches between athletes competing against each other for an agreed stake generated an active betting market. "Gambling was de rigeur at these matches" and significant sums could be won and lost when large crowds turned out to support a local favourite" ([34]: 389-391). The small worlds of pedestrianism and prize-fighting had much in common in this respect.

"The real problem was not with the stakes but with the betting", Colls (2020: 76) has observed in relation to prize-fighting, though it applied more widely. While competitors and their backers found ways to manipulate the odds offered by bookmakers, it was inevitable that they would find themselves in situations where it was more profitable to lose rather than to win. A fighter might "pull" his punches, just as a jockey might "pull" his horse and the integrity of pedestrianism, especially after the 1840s, was undermined by "cheating, trickery, matchfixing and impersonation" ([30]: 237-238). Nor was the ancient game of cricket above suspicion and it struggled for many years to shake off reputational damage arising from match-fixing, which was rife in the early nineteenth century. A match played in 1827 for a stake of a thousand guineas (£1,100) between Sussex and a visiting All-England side raised suspicions when the home team contrived to lose having been in a very strong position. "People here", it was reported from Brighton, "are talking very loudly, that the cricket match which has just ended was a cross [fixed], and that it was lost purposefully by the men of Sussex" ([7]: 165). That corruption was suspected here points to a particular problem in cricket but there were reasons to be sceptical about other sports too.

By the 1860s, prize-fighting was in decline and Bell's Life was reporting that "pedestrianism has fallen so low that no respectable man dare be seen at a foot race" ([30]: 238). These sports, however, were very important in shaping the infrastructure which underpinned the evolving relationship between sport and gambling. A cricket match, a prize fight or a foot race was the end-product of a process involving a chain of entrepreneurial actors, each with their own part to play. By the 1830s, athletes and their backers could rely on an interlocking web of contacts to ensure that an event was successfully arranged, staged and promoted. They were "operating within a structure" which allowed them to make the necessary arrangements while knowing that their stake money was safely deposited and would be paid to the winner after the event as agreed. Pubs, especially those which gained a reputation as "sporting houses", provided a base for this structure from the late-eighteenth century onwards. "Fighters, their trainers, backers, followers and betting men gathered there to issue or accept challenges and agree fights". It was also where "the cognoscenti obtained the latest odds, placed bets, sometimes saw or met their favourites and could be let into the secret of the venue of the (illegal) fight" ([25]: 168-169). These institutions underpinned the sport-gambling nexus, fulfilling this function for both prizefighting and pedestrianism ([3]: 75; [34]: 384-388).

Martin's reference to an "illegal" fight reminds us that access to sport and thereby access to sports-related gambling was subject to some legal constraints, though self-government was the general rule. Horseracing, for example, was closely associated with the aristocracy and landed gentry who organized it through private institutions, like the Jockey Club and the local committees set up to manage race meetings, many of which were held on the country estates which they owned. Only the rich could aspire to own racehorses but for those who could afford it – and some who could not – "the appeal of the turf lay in betting, and betting on a very large scale" ([31]: 417-418; 423-426). Yet horseracing was a sport with genuine cross-class appeal as evidenced by proliferating opportunities to bet at all levels of society. On-course betting was unrestricted but by the 1840s, "there was an increasing interest in racing across all classes and in the major urban areas a new type of cash bookmaker emerged to meet their needs" ([14]: 97). These "list-houses", where bookmakers posted details of horses due to run and the odds at which they could be backed, proliferated in the mid-nineteenth century, Pubs (again), barbers' shops and billiard rooms became favoured locations for placing small cash bets. There were also increased opportunities for middle-class punters to bet with credit bookmakers or "commission agents", as they preferred to be called, many of whom advertised in the sporting press. Though there were local variations, these businesses proved resilient, despite attempts to suppress them, notably under the Betting Houses Act of 1853 ([14]: 96-102).

Having surveyed popular sports and pastimes from the mid-seventeenth to the early-nineteenth centuries, Griffin (2005: 352), concluded that many "traditional recreations" continued to flourish in the newly-urbanized landscape of early-industrial England. As far as some traditional sports were concerned, especially horseracing and pedestrianism, the link with gambling assisted this process, helping to shape cultures of sport with which town and city dwellers, whatever their social status, might identify and in which they could participate by purchasing a sweepstake ticket or placing a bet. Significantly, the infrastructure which the sports-gambling nexus needed to survive in the longer term was already in place. Off-course bookmaking was well established by the mid-nineteenth century, often assuming a respectable outward appearance. "Book-makers" (sic), it was reported from Manchester in 1867, "sat behind a desk or counter, surrounded by betting lists and cards ... and gave out numbered tickets with [their] name and address" ([16]: 36). The arrival, in 1871, of a sporting newspaper, the Daily Sporting Bell, published locally, priced at a penny and targeting customers served by Manchester's "publicans and beerhouse keepers" ([35]: 51) testified to a demand for sporting intelligence from customers wishing to place small cash bets. This was the situation as "old ways of playing" gave way to new from the 1860s onwards.

The emergence of a new era of British sport in the second half of the nineteenth century was signalled by the establishment of governing bodies whose titles indicated regime change. Horseracing and cricket, both rooted in pre-industrial society, were overseen by gentlemen's clubs, the Jockey Club (1752) and the MCC (1787). Such authority as these institutions possessed derived largely from the social status of their members. The establishment of The Football Association (1863) sent out a rather different message about sport. Firstly, the idea that it was "The Football Association", indicated that it was a reformist body intent on making a clean break from the long and unruly tradition of folk football in its various forms. Henceforward "football" could only refer to the codified version played according to the "Laws of the Game" as agreed by its governing body. Association Football ('soccer') acquired first-mover advantage over Rugby football in this respect, the Rugby Football Union arriving later in 1871. A little later, in 1880, governing bodies emerged for athletics (track and field) and boxing. The emphasis on amateurism in their titles – the Amateur Athletic Association and the Amateur Boxing Association – again signifying an intention to distance themselves from old ways of playing. As Martin (2021: 177) has argued, 'the new athletics, a militantly amateur, rule-based regulated sport, displaced the old money-orientated, unregulated pedestrianism." For sport's new masters, neither pedestrianism nor prizefighting were rational or even respectable forms of recreation, not least because of their intimate connections with gambling. These "old ways of playing" were progressively marginalized.

Meanwhile, new-style governing bodies reflected the attitudes and concerns of upper middle-class males, almost invariably privately educated at so-called "public" schools, where they had been exposed to the cults of athleticism and muscular Christianity. The value they assigned to "fair play" reflected these influences and shaped attitudes towards betting which were linked to wider anxieties about corruption ([19]: 133-134). An ideological attachment to amateurism underpinned their pursuit of the gentility to which they aspired. It also reflected deep-seated concerns about the contaminating influence of money, which they were determined to keep out of sport if possible. In this, their "anticommercial emphasis conformed to an increasingly critical attitude towards the market on the part of large segments of the English middle classes" ([6]: 205-208). Some, especially those inclined towards Anglican evangelicalism or protestant nonconformity in religion, were influenced by anti-gambling activists, such as those who later came together under the umbrella of the National Anti-Gambling League (NAGL) after 1890. These campaigners saw gambling as a social evil, especially when indulged in by the working class. "Gambling was typical of a corrupt aristocracy and it served them right if it led to the sale of their estates and the impoverishment of ancient families." When, however, the poor decided to follow their example, "then something had to be done" ([27]: 62).

As we have seen, the relationship between sport and gambling was already well established by the 1860s. Yet it was clear, even then, that it was likely to come under severe pressure. The Betting Houses Act may have disappointed those who hoped that it would bring an end to off-course betting, but it supplied a pretext for police raids on bookmakers and other forms of harassment which indicated a prevailing climate of official hostility. Moreover, as the ideology of amateurism began to prevail in sport, the new governing bodies sought to distance themselves from gambling as far as possible. Yet the situation was complicated. Old ways did not immediately make way for the new. When James Catton, then making his way in sports journalism, began working in Nottingham in the 1880s, his reporting assignments might include "a fight with bare knuckles", arranged secretively so as not to attract the attentions of magistrates or police. He also covered newer, more highly-regulated forms of sporting competition such as Association Football or County Championship cricket ([36]: 63). Defining the period between the 1860s and the 1960s as one in which amateurism was the dominant ethos in British sport is useful. Yet each sport was differently positioned in relation to gambling and there were significant variations in the way that the relationship developed over the long period through to the late-twentieth century. Indeed, some sports, like Rugby Union, which defined itself in terms of pure amateurism until 1995, kept gambling at bay altogether. In the sections that follow, these variations are discussed in the context of the sports which feature most prominently in the published research of sports historians to date.

Horseracing mattered in the nineteenth century because it touched so many lives on account of its efficacy as a vehicle for betting. It was "a sport of which gambling is the very essence" ([31]: 423). Despite legal constraints, numbers of people betting on horses increased after 1870 with one estimate indicating that around four million were doing so regularly by 1914 ([14]: 105). A letter to The Times (6 November 1890) complained that "in the aggregate ... gambling on horse-racing has reached a pitch in this country which is greatly to be deplored." It was certainly more visible by the turn of the century as stricter enforcement of the law against betting houses prompted cash bookmakers to conduct more of their business in the streets, creating a situation which allowed the NAGL and other critics to depict working-class betting as a public nuisance as well as a social evil. After the Street Betting Act (1906), all cash-betting off-course was prohibited, effectively criminalizing millions of working-class punters who added a little excitement to their lives by placing small bets on the outcome of races. An elaborate "cat-and-mouse" game ensued involving magistrates, the police, bookmakers ("bookies") and their agents ("runners"). This ended only when the Betting and Gaming Act (1960) legalized off-course cash betting in licensed betting offices ("betting shops") which quickly became a feature of the urban landscape and remain so to this day. In practice bookmakers and punters ignored or circumvented the law for more than fifty years as an upward trend in betting continued ([23]: 309-310; [14]: 109-110; [28]: 372-373; [2]: 44-78; [1]: 118-149).

At the highest levels of society, high-stakes betting continued to underpin social status via conspicuous consumption, but it is important to avoid drawing firm conclusions from a relatively small number of well-publicized instances of fortunes won and lost. Gamblers who could afford to play at this level were often more astute than it might at first appear, backing horses (usually their own) cheaply at long odds but minimizing potential losses by laying bets on their rivals if it seemed prudent ([14]: 55). However, it is clear that participants at this level were generally concerned to ensure that corruption was held in check. Increasing pressure was exerted by the National Hunt Committee, formed in 1866 after a series of scandals to regulate steeplechasing, and by the Jockey Club after 1870, to achieve this end. In this way, gambling was a "transforming force" as far as horseracing was concerned ([9]: 30-31). The Jockey Club was at first slow to extend its remit beyond Newmarket and a few other courses, but the social prestige of its self-selecting membership meant that its authority was readily accepted when it became more pro-active. By then, local race committees had acquired the habit of referring disputes to the Jockey Club and many had already adopted its rules. It was thus relatively easy for the Club to extend its reach by denying legitimacy to any race meeting not run on approved lines and by refusing licenses to owners, trainers and jockeys who did not comply. By 1900, "the Club had complete control over British flat-racing" ([39]: 237-238).

The Jockey Club's primary concern was to protect the interests of the wealthy elite that owned racehorses but this was inevitably linked to concerns about corrupt sporting practices undermining the integrity of the betting market. Though sometimes accused of complacency, the Club acted decisively when Sir George Chetwynd was accused of serious breaches of the rules, having instructed a jockey to pull several horses in order to achieve the desired results. After an investigation in 1889, Chetwynd resigned in disgrace from the Jockey Club, his continued membership having become untenable. A few years later, the Club intervened again after suspicions arose regarding doping, which had spread from the USA to Britain at the end of the 1890s and remained a major concern for some time. By administering drugs designed to speed up or slow down horses, it was possible for insiders to fix races and profit by betting on the results, thus cheating the gambling public. Though some racehorse owners were anxious that doping would result in long-term damage to British-bred horses, the primary concern was to ensure "that nefarious trainers or bookmakers did not profit from unsuspecting patrons" ([9]: 31-41). A formal doping ban was introduced in 1903 but it was only after the introduction of saliva testing in 1910 that rigorous enforcement became possible, though there were limits as to what could be achieved without adequate surveillance. Vamplew's magisterial verdict, delivered many years later, on the extent of corruption in horseracing seems realistic. "Doping still occurs", he observed, "horses are still pulled and illegalities are still attempted", though "the problem is much less than many losing punters might infer" ([39]: 241-242).

It proved difficult to eradicate the impression that, as far as horseracing was concerned, the intimate connection between sport and gambling was problematic. Indeed, the idea became deeply rooted in popular culture, with feature films and pulp fiction routinely stereotyping bookmakers as crooked and trainers and jockeys as dishonest, though this does not seem to have impacted negatively on the growth of the betting market ([19]: 134-135). Ironically, anxieties regarding reputational damage probably inhibited the development of the surveillance regimes required to ensure that regulations could be stringently enforced on all courses at all times. This would have required a level of investment that the Jockey Club and the elite interests it represented were neither willing nor able to make. Horseracing, in short, needed an injection of funding that a levy on betting could have provided but the Club was reluctant to press for a change in the law that would have made it possible to tap into the profits generated by illegal offcourse betting before 1960. By the 1930s it was estimated that over eight million punters were betting on horseracing "more or less regularly" and that annual turnover was well in excess of £200 million ([15]: 292). What has been described as the Jockey Club's "passivity" ([28]: 355) in this respect has yet to be satisfactorily explained, but it seems likely that a pro-active campaign to decriminalize off-course betting would have invited public scrutiny and that this would have been regarded as intrusive. After it was legalised in 1961, horseracing benefited enormously from a statutory levy on bookmakers which funded – and continues to fund – improvements in racecourse security and investment in the technical services required to deter doping and other forms of corruption ([39]: 225).

Football as played according to the rules of the Football Association (FA) differed from horseracing because, in its newly-codified form after 1863, it was not heavily burdened by a symbiotic relationship with gambling. Huggins (2017: 63) has claimed, nevertheless, that betting on the results of matches "has been an ingrained feature of football since the modern game began." Though this overstates the case, it is clear that, like most other governing bodies that emerged in this period, the FA viewed gambling as a potential problem. Its official history claimed that it had from the start "kept an eye on the dangers of gambling within football" ([10]: 82), which implies that there was something for the FA to "keep an eye on". It is doubtful, however, that football-related betting posed any great threat to the integrity of the game until coupon betting grew in popularity during the 1890s. The entrepreneurs promoting these schemes invited punters to predict the results of a number of matches listed on printed coupons distributed by part-time agents. Those who forecast correctly, were paid from a pool comprising the total amount staked minus a commission to cover costs and a modest profit. These schemes, promoted by bookmakers and newspapers, capitalized on the growing enthusiasm for professional football and the advent of the Football League (1888) and the Scottish Football League (1893), each with a regular schedule of fixtures played weekly on Saturday afternoons. By the turn of the century, coupon betting was sufficiently popular to attract the attention of NAGL and its legal standing was compromised by a court decision in 1901 which ruled that the methods used to collect stake money were an infringement of the Betting Houses Act. Despite this setback, there was "a considerable expansion of football coupon betting ... in the first decade of the twentieth century" ([26]: 179-187).

The football authorities responded by distancing themselves from gambling. There was some overlap between the FA Council and the [English] Football League Management Committee (FLMC) which helped to ensure that they took the same line. The FA, having made compromises in coming to terms with professionalism after the mid-1880s, was especially anxious to demonstrate that its commitment to amateur values remained solid. At the FLMC the tone was set by the "overwhelmingly" protestant nonconformist religious affiliation of its membership which was "reflected in attitudes towards drink and gambling" ([37]: 54-56; [2]: 168). Already strongly predisposed against gambling, the football authorities strengthened their stance after a high-profile match-fixing scandal involving Manchester United and Liverpool at the end of the 1914-15 season. Later, in 1918, George Anderson of Manchester United became the first footballer to receive a prison sentence for attempting to bribe players to throw matches ([21]: 224-225; 235-236). It thus became imperative to demonstrate that opposition to gambling was unconditional. At a practical level, this involved clubs co-operating with the police to deter gambling at matches. When Everton's directors became aware that this had occurred they reported it to the Chief Constable, "as a result of which the Police will make a raid during the [forthcoming] Manchester City match" ([38]). In public, it meant sponsoring the Ready Money Football Betting Act (1920) which outlawed cash betting and led to prosecutions for printing and distributing coupons. The football authorities and the anti-gambling activists were now very much on the same side, a position maintained throughout the interwar period. Giving evidence to the Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting in 1932, the English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish Football Associations were united in urging a ban on all forms of coupon betting ([18]: 69).

Ironically, the 1920 Act led indirectly to the further expansion of football pools businesses which developed on an industrial scale in the interwar years. Millions of customers observed the weekly rituals of filling in their coupons at home in the kitchen or living room, checking them carefully as the final scores became available on Saturday evening. The Ready Money Act, while outlawing cash betting, effectively reaffirmed the legal status of credit, leaving a loophole which John Moores, founder of Littlewoods pools in 1922, exploited by collecting stakes a week in arrears so that a transaction could be completed without a cash bet being made. Though bookmakers continued to offer opportunities for fixedodds betting, it became a sideshow as Littlewoods and rival operators could offer the prospect of big wins for small stakes, the total amount in the pool determining the size of the pay-out. This allowed individual punters to entertain the prospect, albeit statistically remote, of a win that would transform their lives. When Edwin Dodd, on a weekly wage of 48 shillings (£2.40) at a Stoke-on-Trent factory, won £1,000 in 1934, he bought a house and set up business in a small shop, achieving a previously unimaginable state of financial security. Later, Viv Nicholson, whose husband, a coal-miner, won £152,319 in 1961, just wanted to 'spend, spend, spend' ([33]: 46-47; 52-53; [18]: 68). More prosaically, as a Littlewoods customer explained, football pools had an advantage over betting with bookmakers because there was "a chance of winning a good sum for a small investment" ([2]: 166).

For many it was no more than a harmless flutter. While the forecasts of some customers were based on knowledge of the game and current form, others relied on guesswork or lucky numbers when making their selections. Given that it would have required a conspiracy of truly massive proportions to fix sufficient matches to cheat the pools promoters, football's sporting integrity was uncompromised. If there was match-fixing in football, it was more likely to involve clubs making convenient arrangements between themselves in connection with promotion or relegation than players seeking to profit from a betting coup ([20]: 210). With pools betting becoming ever more popular and gaining respectability among people who did not regard it as gambling, the football authorities switched their point of attack, arguing that the pools promoters were parasites who had attached themselves to the game and were profiting by using lists of league and cup fixtures "in breach of copyright" – and without paying. A socalled "Pools War" broke out in 1936 when the Football League sought to thwart the companies by prohibiting advance notice of matches until it was too late for coupons to be distributed and changing some fixtures at short notice, much to the irritation of clubs, fans and "poolites" everywhere. It was a war that the football authorities could only lose owing to the huge popularity of this form of sports-related betting. George Orwell, making notes on working-class life in the North of England for The Road to Wigan Pier, recorded that Germany's reoccupation of the Rhineland was met with "hardly a flutter of interest" but that the Football League's inept intervention "flung all Yorkshire into a storm of fury" ([2]: 170-171; [17]: 99-119; [37]: 73-74).

By the early 1950s it was estimated that up to 14 million people, about half the adult population, participated at some point in the football season, with nearly eight million coupons submitted weekly ([18]: 67). The Pools War had indicated a change of attitude in that the football authorities were now arguing that the promoters owed something to the sport, a case made with increasing urgency after the post-war attendance boom receded in the 1950s leaving many professional clubs in financial difficulties. In 1959 agreement was reached whereby the pools promoters paid an annual levy to the Football League amounting to 0.5 per cent of the total stake money received. In 1965 they reached a similar agreement with the FA in recognition of their "moral obligation" arising from their use of FA Cup-tie fixtures. Yet, though this indicated that the football authorities now had a more relaxed attitude to gambling in general, the exposure in 1963 of a match-fixing scandal involving professionals at several English clubs engaging in a conspiracy in the fixed-odds betting market, highlighted the need for continued vigilance. This form of betting, with bookmakers offering odds on combinations of results ("doubles" and "triples") had previously been regarded as unproblematic but the reputational damage arising from this episode demanded drastic intervention to deter potential miscreants. With football under a cloud of suspicion, the FA issued lifetime bans to several players as they emerged from prison on completion of their sentences ([20]: 176-208). Significantly, however, this did not preclude developing a closer relationship with the pools businesses to whom the governing bodies had once been so opposed but who now represented an increasingly important source of revenue. This was evident when the Football Grounds Improvement Trust (later known as the Football Trust) was established following the disaster at Ibrox Stadium, Glasgow, in 1971, largely funded by the Pools Promoters Association (PPA) from the proceeds of their popular "Spot the Ball" competitions ([22]: 1380-1381). Football's relationship with gambling stabilized on this basis until 1994 when the introduction of the National Lottery struck a near-fatal blow to Littlewoods and its rivals.

Whereas the relationship between horseracing and gambling was shaped in a pre-industrial context and survived into the twentieth century virtually unchanged, the link between the modern sport of greyhound racing and gambling was forged after it arrived in Britain from the USA in 1926. That it established itself so rapidly as a popular entertainment and vehicle for gambling, however, was in part due to a longer tradition of various forms of dog racing that predated the era of modern sport. In some ways coursing, involving greyhounds chasing down a live hare, was a precursor of the betting sport in which greyhounds chased an artificial hare powered by electricity around an enclosed track under floodlights. Coursing had been especially popular in the North-West of England and was symbiotically related to horseracing with meetings often held at the same locations. Aintree, since 1829 the home of the Grand National, the world's oldest steeplechase, was also the home of the Waterloo Cup race, dating from 1836. This was to become an annual fixture in the sporting and betting calendar until New Labour's Hunting Act (2005) very belatedly outlawed the pursuit of live bait by animals. Coursing developed many of the same features as horseracing. By 1858 it had its own governing body and it enjoyed aristocratic patronage along with considerable popular support. It was also covered in the sporting press and attracted a significant amount of betting.

Behind the attractions of Aintree and the Waterloo Cup lay a hinterland of dog racing and betting on the wastelands to be found on the fringes of industrial towns and cities where working men gathered with their whippets. These dogs, smaller than greyhounds, chased a target, often a piece of meat or a meat-scented handkerchief, which was tied to a stick and waved or "flapped" by one of the dog owners. Hence the emergence of "flapping tracks", primitive working-class arenas where there was much informal wagering "on the dogs". Sometimes a bicycle would be upended and its wheel used to pull the "hare" for the whippets to chase ([8]). Races were organized locally between punters and dog owners; often street bookmakers would be involved, bringing more capital to the betting market and resulting in higher stakes and winnings ([2]: 138-143). These cultural practices survived well into the twentieth century and seem to have been especially popular in the early 1920s. An American sociologist who studied the flapping track phenomenon, saw it as a place of escape for workers trapped in a bleak urban environment, but also as somewhere that exposed them to the malign influence of bookmakers ([44]: 166-167). Thus, there was an appetite for betting on dogs long before the advent of the electric hare and the first greyhound race at Belle Vue, Manchester in 1926. Moreover, the infrastructure which had evolved to cater for betting on other sports was already in place and easily adapted to facilitate betting on greyhounds.

Entrepreneurs were quickly aware of the demand for commercialized greyhound racing in the 1920s and by the time that the Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting reported in 1933 there were over 220 tracks across Britain. It offered accessible opportunities, usually twice-weekly, for legal on-course cash betting in accessible urban locations. Its appeal was enhanced by its marketability as a floodlit spectacle offering American-style glamour, especially when staged at Wembley where it saved the stadium owners from bankruptcy by drawing huge attendances ([4]: 100-114). It flourished despite the opposition of the NAGL and preachers who denounced it from the pulpit. It was, of course, essentially a vehicle for gambling with which it had a symbiotic relationship. For Winston Churchill, Chancellor of the Exchequer at the start of the greyhound-racing boom, the new sport was simply "animated roulette" ([24]: 4). In the late 1940s and early 1950s, when it became for a short time even more popular, it was denounced as a symptom of moral decline. Britain, some critics claimed, was "going to the dogs" in more ways than one ([2]: 138). Its largely, though not exclusively, working class audience was also a cause for concern. Why was it, asked one Labour MP rather pointedly, "that the evils of gambling are only discovered when working men start gambling?" ([24]: 10). By 1932 it was attracting weekly attendances of around 20 million, increasing to 26 million by 1939 ([15]: 295-296). As McKibbin (1998: 373) observed, "dog racing was for serious betters and they went regularly."

Unencumbered by the past, the new sport was distinguished from those which had originated in the era of amateur hegemony by its unabashed commercialism. Unsurprisingly, greyhound racing's unapologetic relationship with gambling led to claims of corruption and malpractice. Greyhounds were sometimes doped with sedatives or painkillers; they were sometimes fed before races so that they carried excess weight. There were even tales of dogs being masturbated so that they would lose interest in chasing the hare ([24]: 164-166). Sometimes they ran under false names as they moved from track to track, though this problem was addressed when the National Greyhound Racing Club (NGRC), the new sport's equivalent of the Jockey Club, was established in 1928 and rules regulating racing and betting were published. However, although there were some problems, especially at unaffiliated tracks beyond the reach of the NGRC, claims emanating from hostile sources were often exaggerated. It was certainly in the interests of those who promoted the sport and invested heavily in its infrastructure to safeguard its integrity. By the 1940s, betting on greyhounds totalled around £300 million annually, almost as much as horseracing and far more than football pools, where stakes were much lower. Laybourn (2019: 197) has argued recently that the noise generated by the anti-gambling lobby ensured that that the police were especially vigilant in their oversight of the sport, thus helping to ensure that it was subject to relatively low levels of malpractice and corruption.

Cricket, often regarded as quintessentially English, provides an interesting case study. Though the sports-gambling nexus had been a feature of the game in the early-nineteenth century, it either receded or became invisible for a long period from the mid-nineteenth century before reasserting itself – or becoming visible once more – after 2000. The way in which English cricket restructured itself in the second half of the nineteenth century was characteristically idiosyncratic. "First-class cricket", as defined by the game's governing body, embraced the English County Championship and, eventually, teams representing England playing high-profile "Test Matches" against Australia and South Africa, The amateur ethos was dominant, subscribed to enthusiastically by aristocratic patrons who could afford to play for the love of the game and by middle-class cricketers who signalled their respectability by adhering conspicuously to a gentlemanly code of behaviour. Professionals, talented working-class players who could help achieve success on the field, were tolerated only if they deferred to their social superiors and accepted employment conditions based on a master-servant relationship. Under this dispensation, though it developed many of the characteristics of a modern spectator sport, English cricket was able to draw a line under its rackety, match-fixing past and define itself as a sport played by gentlemen, according to rules, written and unwritten, that kept vulgar commerce at a distance. Though bets were sometimes placed, there was a notable absence of the kind of market that would attract the serious attention of bookmakers. Surveying the English cricket scene of the mid-twentieth century, Williams (1999: 144-145) noted the absence in the press of the kind of forecasting associated with horses, dogs and football and concluded that "betting on cricket cannot have been as extensive as that on other sports."

The abolition of the formal distinction between amateurs and professionals in 1963 heralded a period in which cricket reorientated itself towards commerce as it fought for its place in an increasingly competitive leisure market. English cricket began to reinvent itself, promoting shorter versions of the game and actively seeking commercial sponsorship. Its relationship with gambling reemerged, tentatively at first, when several clubs followed Warwickshire's lead and began operating football pools to raise the funds they needed to stay afloat ([32]: 335). With short-form cricket reviving spectator interest and fiveday Test matches broadcast live on television there was more media exposure and more betting. Ladbrokes and other major bookmakers became a noticeable presence at important matches. Occasionally, minor incidents occurred which preechoed the problematic relationship between cricket and gambling that developed later. The Worcestershire club, for example, terminated Younis Ahmed's contract for "gross misconduct" after allegations that he had bet on their opponents to win a match for which he had been selected (The Times, 11 May 1983). In the first years of the new century, however, a new pattern began to emerge after it was revealed that South Africa's captain, Hanse Cronje, had received large sums from bookmakers in connection with matches in which he had been engaged around the world. Cronje later revealed that he had been paid to persuade the England team to play the final day of a rain-ruined Test Match against South Africa in 2000, raising suspicions about the integrity of cricket at the highest level. Incidences of cricket malpractice related to gambling proliferated, much of it emanating from South Asia, where a huge illegal betting market had emerged. So-called "Spot-fixing", became a problem with players bribed to contrive that certain events would occur during the course of a match. It was this that led to Mervyn Westfield's prison sentence and subsequent cricket ban arising from an incident in a County Championship match between Essex and Durham in 2009 ([42]: 120-121).

Cricket by 2020 was a global sport played at its highest levels by talented professionals who moved around the world, signing short-term contracts for whichever franchise in whatever country offered the most attractive terms. It had been transformed, initially, by the arrival of satellite television in the 1990s with sport used as a "battering ram" by Sky and other providers to open up markets for payto-view services. It had also been transformed by the internet. In relation to the development of a globalized market for sports-based gambling, for example, the necessary technology and software required to support an international online payments system was in place by 1996. Since then, sport governing bodies have been faced with the problem of how to deal with gambling occurring everywhere and yet nowhere, much of it beyond the reach of national jurisdiction. Criticism of the England and Wales Cricket Board for an inadequate response are misdirected in the sense that global problems seem to require global solutions, or at least a significant degree of international co-operation, in order to tackle them successfully. Cricket journalist Ed Hawkins has been critical of the International Cricket Council, the governing body of the game worldwide, for failing to confront a rising tide of match-fixing, spot-fixing and other forms of gamblingrelated corruption. "Charged with cutting out a cancer, they have wielded the scalpel ham-fistedly", he has observed ([12]). Of course, English cricket's problems are not unique in this respect. Huggins (2018: 125-126), has pointed to the growth of internet-based betting platforms and the increased availability of online betting worldwide as a major problem impacting in recent years on cricket, but also baseball, football, horseracing, tennis, sumo wrestling and many other sports.

Sport and gambling in Britain were closely interlinked throughout the entire period surveyed here. In the era defined by what has been described as "old ways of playing", betting was an integral part of the sporting landscape, associated with cricket, horseracing, prize-fighting and pedestrianism, all of which benefited from a substantial following. The betting markets that developed generated a supportive infrastructure which included a specialist sporting press. Though there was undoubtedly some sharp practice, this was probably mitigated by the face-to-face nature of the relationships between sporting rivals and their backers in what was then a relatively small world of sport.

The mid-nineteenth century initiated an important period of transition for the relationship between sport and gambling. Some sports rooted in pre-industrial society continued to flourish, though there was a greater emphasis on efficient regulation and fair competition. After 1870, the Jockey Club became more pro-active in this respect as it was in the interest of its members, who owned and trained racehorses, to discourage activities which would compromise the betting markets and undermine the sport's reputation. Some other sports dating from the pre-industrial era, notably pedestrianism and prize-fighting, diminished in importance over the second half of the nineteenth century. Whereas these had been closely associated with gambling, the new sports which succeeded them were regulated by products of the English "public" school system who were committed to the ideal of amateurism. They were anxious to insulate their sports against the potentially corrupting influences of commercialism in general and gambling in particular, which they actively discouraged. Of the sports surveyed in this article, the ethos associated with gentlemanly amateurism prevailed in cricket and in association football, both popular sports in the late-nineteenth century. It continued to influence the regulation of these sports well into the twentieth century, and impacted on the ways in which they came to terms with professionalism.

Though it might be anticipated that sports-related gambling would diminish in this climate, gambling at all levels of society continued to grow, despite persistent efforts to suppress it via legislation, which tended to discriminate against working-class gambling in particular. Most betting by the early years of the twentieth century was on horseracing and all off-course cash betting was illegal until the 1960s. Though neighbourhood bookmakers and their customers found ways of circumventing this restriction, it helped to divert the sixpences and shillings of working-class punters into other channels, notably coupon betting on football which grew steadily in popularity from the 1890s and then took off in the interwar years when the weekly football pools became a firmly established feature of British working-class culture, maintaining this position until the end of the century. From 1926, the new sport of greyhound racing, self-consciously modern and successfully promoted, with new purpose-built stadia strategically located to attract working-class gamblers provided yet more opportunities for betting, both oncourse (legally) and off-course (illegally), though its popularity has declined since the 1960s and it is now encountered mainly via races relayed live to betting shops to supplement the other sports on offer.

Thus, over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, sport and gambling have developed in parallel. In horseracing and greyhound racing, where gambling was essentially the raison d'etre, the relationship between the two activities might be best described as symbiotic or mutually dependent. In cricket and football, it has been at times distant but has tended to become closer over time. Perhaps its most discernible beneficial impact derives from the interest which both parties have in ensuring that corruption is minimized in the interests of fair competition. As has been argued here, however, with particular reference to the development of global online betting on cricket in the twenty-first century, the sport-gambling nexus faces new and difficult challenges in relation to effective surveillance and regulation. In the twenty-first century it has acquired a globalised dimension which necessitates regulatory structures that transcend national boundaries to ensure that corruption is minimized. James Welldon, Dean of Durham Cathedral and a fierce critic of sports-related gambling in the earlytwentieth century, looked favourably on cricket as a traditional English sport that was "singularly free from contaminating influences" (Shields Daily News, 29 August 1921). This is not a position that could now be maintained with any credibility. Cricket's gambling-related problems, however, are not unique and effective vigilance in all major sports requires international co-operation on a global scale.