Massachusetts sports fans have enjoyed legal wagering since January. Here’s what the 2023 timeline looked like.

Before sports gambling in Massachusetts was legalized this year, passionate sports fans resorted to traveling to neighboring states to place their bets. If they couldn’t participate within the comfort of the nearest sports bar, driving a few hours on the road to states that had already legalized sports betting — such as New Hampshire and Connecticut — couldn’t hurt.

To bring the sports scene attention back to Massachusetts, a committee of state representatives introduced a bill legalizing sports betting in 2021.

“It just didn’t make sense that all of our folks from Massachusetts were going to other states and they were getting our revenue,” said Jerald Parisella, a Massachusetts state representative of the sixth Essex district who was a part of the committee.

At the time, some 25 states had already passed sports betting laws, so Parisella and his team took months to consider what they thought were the best parts of the existing bills to create the legislation for Massachusetts, said Parisella. One year later, Governor Charlie Baker signed the sports betting bill into law Aug. 10, 2022.

On a federal level, the 2018 Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association ruling from the Supreme Court established that the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act’s prohibition of state authorized sports gambling violated the 10th Amendment. This monumental court case had set the precedent for states to introduce legal sports betting in years to come. In just five years, three quarters of states have passed legislation for sports wagering.

Despite the oozing passion that sports fans in the state brought to games and heated debates, Massachusetts was in the last quarter of states to legalize sports wagering. Part of this was because Parisella’s committee wanted to ensure sports fans were protected from the many downfalls of gambling, such as debt, addiction, and more.

“It probably took longer than some of folks hoped,” Parisella said. “But at the end of the day we got a good bill.”