Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies will improve sports gambling and solve many problems, including everything that is connected to anonymity, transparency, and transactions. Because of that blockchain technology and crypto betting are becoming an important part of the sports gambling industry.
Sports gambling is one of the biggest businesses in the world and according to statista (The Statistics Portal), the market volume of online gaming was forecasted to reach 51.96 billion U.S. dollars in 2018, more than doubling since 2009.
Sports Betting is a Growing Industry
More and more people are involved from all around the world, especially new players are coming from Africa and Asia. For example, in Nigeria, around 60 million people are involved in gambling activities and in South Africa, around 50% of the population is involved in sports betting.
STATISTA (Size of the online gambling market from 2009 to 2020 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Both – bookmakers and sports gamblers will benefit from blockchain
Sports gambling odds on the betting market can change every minute. In many cases, odds are the difference between winning and losing.
For every sports gambler, it is important to get the best possible price. Online betting gives the chance to have multiple bookmakers accounts and bet at the same time with more accounts, which was not physically possible when betting with local gambling shops. Sports gambling online was a big step forward, but still not ideal…
The current sports gambling industry is not ideal
Sports gamblers face many problems on a daily basis with many authorities, sportsbooks, and banks. Let’s point out some of the problems, that can be solved with blockchain technology.
Illegal bookmakers
Several underground bookmakers are run by criminals. They avoid taxes, run illegal activities, and sports gamblers’ money is never 100% safe. Most people don’t want to deal with them, but they still bet there because they simply don’t have other chances to bet somewhere else.
Legal bookmakers
The second group is legal bookmakers and we see more and more new very good online bookmakers every year. They will also face all kinds of country restrictions by governments, big transaction fees, and when there are online transactions, there is almost always a problem with security.
What about sports bettors?
Every online business brings some concerns. It is no different from online sports gambling. Players must always provide their personal information, and information about their credit cards, and most online transactions have high fees and are slow.
Security is questionable very often and in the end, we have our governments that will try to limit our sports gambling activities. Because of that bookmakers also close the door for many players.
Here is an example, what kind of information you need to provide to Bet365 if you want to open an account:

Sports gamblers and bookmakers have to deal with these issues on a daily basis. Because of that also online sports gambling sites sometimes can not offer the best experience for players. Sports gamblers stick to many bad bookmakers because there was no alternatives.
Blockchain technology in sports gambling
The question is, what if there is a way to improve security, reduce the cost of transactions, speed up transactions and at the same time allow sports gamblers to bet anonymously?
What is a blockchain for sports gambling?
A blockchain is a digitized, decentralized, public ledger of all cryptocurrency transactions. Users are in full control of their information and transactions, the database can be shared without a central authority.
How can blockchain and cryptocurrencies improve sports betting world?
First of all, bettors can bet anonymously, without providing any personal information. There are already a couple of bitcoin bookmakers, where you can bet anonymously. Here you can see how easy is to open an account at Nitrogensports, where you can create your account without giving away any personal information.

This gives bettors anonymity and because of that their government authorities don’t know, that they were betting on sports.
Transactions are instant, cheaper, and more secure. Blockchain brings transparency to all transactions.
Smart contracts allow fair resolution of bets and payouts to occur automatically. Because of that, bookmakers will gain more trust.
Because of cheaper transactions, their operating costs are lower and because of that, they can offer better odds too.
No country restrictions make a bigger pool of bettors and because of that, they can also offer much more sports events.
The first step in the right direction is made, there are a couple of first very good bitcoin bookmakers out there.