You know the scene. Two characters (usually a somewhat harmless looking protagonist against a burly big tough guy) start to fight. A crowd forms around them.
“5 bucks on the big strong guy.”, says one person in the crowd.
“10 bucks on the obvious winner.”, another crowd member bets on the same.
“100 bucks the underdog main character wins.”, shouts a supporting character also in the crowd. The others look at him in disbelief.
Then the fight happens, underdog wins, and we cut to the supporting character with a wad of cash in hand being really smug.
What’s the logistics of that money exchange? Like, if there was a bookie keeping track of who bet how much on what, and doing the pay outs, that would obviously work. Or if people individually accepted each others bets. But these stories always just display people shouting, and then the winner with the money. Is this shouting style betting actually based in reality, or is it just a nice dramatization for entertainment purposes?
Don’t Americans do this in real life? That’s what TV taught me.
Well, I know I say it often, but there’s never any money exchanged.
The same source taught me that cops are good and if that’s true, impromptu gambling must be common