Last weekend was the first weekend of the 2021-22 NFL season, and it looked a lot different than last year’s opening weekend.

New faces on new teams. Fans in the stadium. Ratings are back up.

Oh, and everyone is suddenly betting.

Sports betting volume over the first weekend of the NFL season hit 58.2 million transactions across 18 states and Washington D.C. — up a jaw-dropping 126% year-over-year.

According to Lindsay Slader, a managing director with Geocomply:

“We expected high volumes, but what we have seen has surprised us nonetheless. The level of demand across new markets, such as Arizona, indicates that consumers have long waited for the option to legally place a sports bet.”

And that’s the key word here: legally.

People love sports. About 60% of Americans consider themselves sports fans. People also love to compete with their friends and win money. I don’t have to throw a number out there for you to understand that — it’s human nature.

So, in essence, sports betting sits at the overlap of three things humans love to do: Watch sports, compete, and win money. Of course, then, sports betting is naturally something that people want to do — aside from the tiny little fact that it has been illegal pretty much everywhere outside of Las Vegas for decades.

Until May 14, 2018, when the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (“PASPA”), which since 1992 had prevented U.S. states — aside from Nevada, Delaware, and Oregon — from engaging in the regulation and taxation of interstate gambling and sports betting.

The floodgates were knocked open. Since then, 26 states and Washington D.C. have legalized sports betting and have live operations today. Another six states have legalized sports betting with live operations coming soon, and two have active legislation in the pipeline.

Tally it all up, and you’re talking 34 states that will likely have legal sports betting by 2022. Remember: Just four years prior, it was illegal pretty much everywhere.

In other words, while legislation is notoriously the slowest process in the book, sports betting legislation has moved forward at breakneck speed, setting the stage for pent-up demand to get unleashed much sooner than most anticipated.

Not to mention, you have the whole “virtual casino” movement here. Long story short, the novel coronavirus pandemic forced consumers to adopt online betting platforms which, thanks to the widespread roll-out of 5G, are actually pretty robust platforms with fast connectivity and good betting experiences.

The result, concurrent to legislation legalizing sports betting everywhere, is that technology platforms are allowing sports fan to place bets on their phones or computers.

In essence, then, we are going from a world where you had to travel across multiple states to place a sports bet in a smoke-filled casino to one where you can place a sports bet from your living room.

That’s a seismic shift sparking a sports betting boom.

ARK Invest estimates that the online sports betting market in the U.S. alone will grow from $9.5 billion today to $37 billion by 2025, implying a near 4X increase in value in just four years.

Not too many industries are going to grow by 4X in four years.

And that’s why we’re very bullish on hypergrowth stocks tied to the sports betting market. They’re positioned for several years of big growth ahead.

In my exclusive investment research advisory The Daily 10X Stock Report — where I highlight one potential 10X stock pick every single day the market is open — I’ve included a handful of great sports betting picks to date.

A couple of them have already soared…

But we’re still in the first inning of this ballgame (no pun intended), and that’s why I’m going to keep highlighting new sports betting stocks in The Daily 10X.

These stocks are going to absolutely soar over the next few years as the sports market quadruples in size.

You stand to make a lot of money in this booming megatrend… but only if you pick the right stocks.

Click here to find out more.

On the date of publication, Luke Lango did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.