The prospects for Flutter Entertainment were transformed by the US Supreme Court’s decision four years ago to overturn the 1992 Professional Amateur Sports Protection Act (Paspa), which banned betting on sport in most states.
Paspa was a classic example of Congress getting itself in the sort of tangle that led to alcohol prohibition in the 1920s. Sports administrative bodies, primarily in basketball but also in baseball and American football, were spooked by match-rigging scandals and naively thought that the problem could be legislated away. As with prohibition, though, Paspa merely drove activities underground.
The Supreme Court decided that Paspa infringed states’ constitutional right to regulate their own citizens, starting a race to feed the sort of betting mania that pervades the UK.
After huge investment
