Is It Legal To Bet On Major League Baseball In The US?

To date, there are three federal laws which affect sports betting in the US that we will go over in this legal betting preview. The first is the Wire Act, which was passed in the sixties and targeted the source of income for organized crime rings. The second was PASPA, which was passed in the nineties. This law targeted land-based sportsbooks. The final law we’ll go over on this legal betting preview page is the UIGEA. This is a law that tries to expand the Wire Act to include business owners in other countries by targeting how Americans can fund their sportsbook. It is important to remember that even though there are laws that restrict sports betting in the United States, there aren’t any laws that make it illegal to use a sports betting site to bet on Major League Baseball.

In the 1960’s, Robert F. Kennedy – the US Attorney General at the time – suggested to Congress that legislation be passed in order to stem the flow of income to Organized Crime rings. In 1961, the Wire Act was passed. This law makes it illegal for anyone to take a wager over a line, or wire, of communication. Effectively, it was supposed to help states be able to regulate their own laws on sports betting, which at the time were being circumvented by people calling their friends in Vegas. The Wire Act was the first big piece of legislation put into place with the intent to stop sports betting.

The Wire Act was written in a way that was meant to stop an activity by taking away people’s means of participating. Its intention was to stop sports betting, but it didn’t actually outlaw betting on sports. It just said that people in the United States couldn’t take your bet if you weren’t standing right in front of them. So despite the fact that the Wire Act has been extended over the years to cover new forms of communication, like the internet, it still doesn’t apply to online, overseas sportsbooks. This is because US Federal law cannot be enforced on people who aren’t US citizens. This is why using an online sports betting site located in another country is the best and most legal way for you to bet on sports in the United States.

The really important thing to take away from this legal sports betting preview page is that none of these laws actually make betting on sports illegal. PASPA, or the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, was suggested to Congress in the early 90’s, after several of the commissioners from professional and college sports got together and petitioned congress. The commissioners were concerned with the growing popularity of sports betting and the supposed risks it posed to the teams, players, and the bettors themselves. They brought up several gambling scandals that had taken place throughout the years, including the infamous black sox, who threw the World Series in 1919, and the Pete Rose Scandal, in which Rose had placed wagers on his team while serving as player-manager.

Congress was convinced of the risk, and in 1992, signed PASPA into law. PASPA makes it unlawful for states to regulate their own sportsbooks. There are four exceptions to the law, as Delaware, Montana, Nevada, and Oregon had already legalized forms of sports betting prior to the passage of the act. Only Nevada, though, had legalized betting on all sports. Delaware, Montana, and Oregon had only legalized limited gambling on NBA and NFL. So what PASPA effectively did to betting on baseball in the US was limit it down to one state. What PASPA didn’t do was make it illegal to use an online sportsbook located outside of the US. So while it’s incredibly inconvenient to fly to Nevada just to bet in person, it’s incredibly easy to log on to your computer, smartphone, or tablet and use any one of the sports betting sites that accept American players. Besides being easy to use and having incredible perks, they’re also completely legal to use.

The UIGEA, also known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, was a piece of legislature that sought to increase the reach of the 1961 Wire Act by stating that it was unlawful for owners of online gaming sites to take wagers from US players and by going after the financial aspect of online sports betting. This law was outlined and guided by the National Gambling Impact Study of 1999. This study went over a number of different issues in regards to all sorts of gambling, not just sports betting. Based on the results of this study, congress decided to write the UIGEA, but they didn’t do it through conventional means. This act was written hastily and snuck through Congress on the coattails of an entirely unrelated piece of legislature. Because of this, it can get a little hard to understand, so we’ve broken down the sections of the UIGEA in order to relay all of the pertinent information to you in this legal betting preview page.

The predominant aim of this act was to expand the Wire Act, by outlawing online gaming sites from accepting fund from US residents and by targeting the financials directly. In section 5361 of the UIGEA, lawmakers claim that banks and credit card companies were facing growing problems due to internet gambling. They used this claim to make it unlawful for banks to process transactions that are tied to known gambling sites. In section 5363 and 5364, The UIGEA gave the Federal Reserve Board and the US Attorney General the ability to create regulations that would “prevent the processing of restricted transactions”. These entities created a list of payment systems covered by the act, including credit cards and wire transfers. It is these sections that make it hard for gaming sites to process your payment.

When the UIGEA was passed, it immediately landed the federal government into some hot water, namely with the European Union, Antigua, and the World Trade Organization. That is because these countries felt that the US was trying to impose its laws on citizens of other countries – which it was. They were also extremely angry because the US was violating their free market trade agreement, causing their businesses to lose millions of dollars in revenue. The European Union threatened a lawsuit, but it was the country of Antigua that actually went through with legal action. They sued the US for nearly $400 million, and within months of taking the US to court, the World Trade Organization took the side of Antigua. The US lost the suit and the UIGEA became nothing more than a scary-sounding banking regulation.

It is really important to remember that while the UIGEA sounds like it makes gambling illegal, it doesn’t. The only people that can be targeted under the UIGEA are financial institutions. This is why you may encounter problems when trying to make credit card deposits or with wire transfers taking a long time. Even though the act has basically been nullified after the US lost their case with Antigua, the language regarding how to deal with the financial aspect was never officially repealed. So there is still some lasting effects from this otherwise void act. Fortunately, most sports betting sites that accept American players provide several other funding methods besides wire transfers and credit cards. Below, we’ve come up with a list of the three best ways to legally fund your sports betting account.