For Schiller, "Man (...) is only fully human when he plays." Sporting competitions have been the subject of wagers since the ancient Greek games. The Romans continued this tradition, while public benefactors—the forerunners of Maecenas—hired gladiators and charioteers for the people's entertainment. Unlike public or private games of chance, sports betting was permitted as an additional source of funding for athletes.
With the spread of Christianity, gamblers were accused of making illegitimate use of divine providence, and both games of chance and sports betting went underground. From the 17th century onward, the Church's stance grew more lenient, the state needed new sources of revenue, and probability theory emerged thanks to a gambler, the Chevalier de Méré—all of which rehabilitated gambling. Then, in the 19th century, gambling, once deemed a sin that encouraged idleness, came to be seen as a vice, leading many countries to ban games of chance; France did so in 1836. This prohibition was gradually relaxed, with the 1907 law on casinos, the creation of the PMU in 1931, and the reinstatement of the national lottery in 1933. The sports lottery, which would become Loto Foot, appeared in 1985.
-
Football odds
------------
Pari-mutuel betting, invented in 1865 by Michel Oller, a perfumer and the first bookmaker, consists in pooling the bettors' stakes, deducting a percentage for administrative costs, and distributing the remainder among the winning bettors according to odds calculated from the stakes, with no risk to the organizer.
