If you’re a sports fan, odds are pretty good that at one point or another you’ve got engaged in some type of sports betting. You could happen to be associated with a fantasy pool, you might have bet a beer with a buddy, you may even have placed a few of bets on the outcome of the Super Bowl or March Madness.

Although sports gambling is so common it really is almost natural (in reality, it’s been a part of human culture for as long as sport itself), the very fact is that many forms of sports gambling we engage in are in fact illegal. This is particularly true if you live in Canada or the United States Of America.

The big argument against gambling on most sports in these countries is a belief that betting on sports has the potential to undermine the integrity of the game. Although in the past this tended to hold true with all sports, today it is more a problem with minor sports and collegiate level athletics than the professional leagues.

The reasoning because of this, as always, is fairly simple. Athletes who are receiving minimum money for playing their sport tend to be more susceptible to bribes from individuals with a vested monetary interest within the game they can be playing. When you are playing for nothing although the joy of it, the offer of a couple of thousand dollars to throw the game may be very tempting. Sports history is rife with examples of athletes both minor and pro that have succumbed to this temptation.

Legalities aside, it is fairly obvious that sports betting is still a serious part of our culture. In reality, it is quite rare to hear of circumstances in which anyone beyond those directly involved in the game even get in trouble for engaging in sports betting. Those involved would include coaches, officials, and players, rarely those betting on the game itself.

In reality, you could say that sports gambling is basically an “open crime” currently. Odds and money lines are posted on all the major sports channels, and bookmakers operate online with relative impunity. You can find little or no efforts to stop mass betting on sports, which appears to indicate that sooner or later the laws prohibiting the activity will be done away with for good.

Within the meantime, even though, if you need to get a piece of betting action on a sport but want to stay well in the law, you can find a couple of ways to do it. Let’s take a quick look.

Pari-mutuel betting: You can find certain sports in which the government actually endorses betting. This type of betting is described as pari-mutuel, or revenue shared, gambling. Strictly regulated, it applies only to dog and horse racing, and jai alai. All of these events are quite short, and so harder to rig in terms of results. And, the federal government gets a cut of all bets!

Go to Vegas! Nevada will be the one state through which sports betting is legal and practiced as well. Again, who knows the real reasons, but you will find Nevada bookies ready to take bets from people all over the country.

Go on-line: For most of the rest of the world, sports betting is regulated and not seen as a problem. That implies that as a result of the net, people from North America can place their bets with well-known bookies the world over. Bookmakers out of Vegas, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, and any range of other countries have a presence online soccer gambling. Just ensure that they will take your hard earned money; some are leery of American bettors do to the government’s ambiguity on the issue of sports gambling.