EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Lisa Kerney once earned her living hosting “SportsCenter” on ESPN, making her a nightly fixture in the vast American conversation between sports fans and their favorite athletes, teams and leagues. Her latest endeavor, she believes, is just as all-American.

Every Saturday, Kerney slips into the anchor’s chair of a very different kind of television program: a sports betting show from a makeshift studio at the Meadowlands Racetrack. Instead of reporting just scores and news, Kerney now also rattles off N.F.L. point spreads and money-line odds as easily as a CNBC host talks stock prices and P/E ratios.

She will be on the air again this Sunday, serving up information on the New England Patriots and the Los Angeles Rams in the hours before Super Bowl LIII. The game will take its place in American gambling history because, for the first time, bettors will be allowed to wager on the N.F.L.’s championship game legally, not only in Nevada but also in seven other states.

By next year, gambling may be legal in more than a dozen more states, a shift that is already moving betting on games into the mainstream of American culture and teaching fans to look at the sports contests they love as investment opportunities as well as entertainment.