Bet Me

The Super Bowl may be the holy grail for Las Vegas sports gambling, but outside the United States, horse-racing, soccer and, surprisingly, pro tennis dominate. Tennis provides bettors with 19,000 matches a year (compared to 1,200 NBA games, 2,400 Major League Baseball games and fewer than 300 NFL games), with betting on 400,000 individual games and even on individual points, of which there are nearly 2.5 million, according to a January New York Times item in Melbourne, Australia. In January’s Australian Open, a routine fourth-round women’s match between players ranked ninth and 28th in the world attracted more than $4 million in wagers on just the first set.