The Esports Arena at the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas.
The Esports Arena at the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas.
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How esports, gambling, and sports betting are converging

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 12 min

In May, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal law that prohibited states from legalizing betting on professional and collegiate sporting events. That meant a lot of things, including the notion that esports betting could finally step out of the shadows in the legal sports betting arenas.

Joseph Pappano, managing director of Worldpay Gaming, is watching this space closely, as it means that legal esports betting, sports gambling, and other forms of gambling will eventually converge into a single market.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.