I hate coming in with anecdotal evidence, but… in the last ten years the number of people I know who have gotten clearly addicted to sports betting is genuinely shocking. Especially younger men. They do this obsessively, and they’re all losing money.
I love sports and I enjoy gambling but I HATE sports gambling so I admit I am a biased observer here, but obvious addiction to sports gambling has just exploded all around me.
You certainly will have the odd Bob Voulgaris who finds a way to cash in, but the absolutely reality is that the number of people who will make money off this is, statistically, treatable as zero. Legal sports gambling imposes a 10% house edge, which is enormous - far more than almost any game in a casino - and the guys setting the spreads and odds have access to info and a level of savvy and analysis that is light years beyond what it was when Voulgaris was killing it in NBA betting. I am telling you right now that it cannot be beaten long team. If you meet 1000 sports betters, it is very likely that 1000 of them have a negative expectation long term. With luck you’ll meet one who is winning. Many of them will SAY they are winning, but they’re lying to themselves. You’ll note they all still have day jobs.
Legal bookies are draining young men of their cash.
That guy you know who knows a lot about the NFL is almost certainly a child as compared to the betting houses. They are going to absolutely fucking murder him long term; anything he knows, they know twice as much about it. They are running algorithms to find patterns that an ordinary shmoe has zero defense against. if there is a leak in their work, they WILL find it. Fighting the casinos or MGM or whomever is a sucker’s bet.
The comparison to “Betting” on Microsoft or whomever just doesn’t make sense. The stock market, long term,. goes up. The average investor has a positive expectation - you CAN lose, but in fact you’re likelier to win. Sports betting has an enormous negative expectation. 10% is an appalling rate of loss.
Betting on stocks is when a numpty incurs high relative costs in an effort to “beat the market”. He won’t beat the market, and will wind up earn less than he would otherwise earn (approx 10% per year) by paying his high cost of buying and selling.
Betting on sports is when a numpty tries to “beat the house”. He won’t beat the house, and the house is setup to take their vig (10% according to @rickjay) every single time you place a bet. You can lose 100% of your “investment” in no time just paying the vig.
I’d also venture to guess that legalized gambling tends to increase funding to mafia-type organizations and, thereby, increase corruption in local government and union groups.
People do make money from sports betting. You probably can’t do it with the big ticket markets match odds/money line/over-under goals etc. You need to go into the weeds and find the obscure stats that very few people bet on and the sportsbook traders can’t afford to fully analyse. Many people in the UK have made a long term profit on such things, until caught.
My objections to legalized gambling go back to 1986 when Missouri first authorized a state lottery. The promise would that the millions generated by the lottery would go straight to education. The same argument was made in 1992, when the voters approved riverboat casinos, and now it’s being used for sports betting.
I can’t speak to other states’ experience, but in Missouri the facts are that for every dollar that gambling brought in, the state legislature simply reduced funding for education from general revenues by that same amount. So there was never a windfall from gambling to benefit society in general.
Suppose we decided to fund transportation or the police or infrastructure by that method.
Stocks do not require 10% costs. Large investment accounts typically have 1-2% annual fees. Small investors can do better. ETrade charges nothing for stocks. I know that various fees can come into the picture, but nothing close to 10%.
Well, unless you are playing one of the few gambling games where skill is involved )Poker is one, and card counting blackjack is another)- of course you lose money. But yeah, addicted gamblers are ruining other peoples lives, not just their own.
But you see- overall the market goes up. And there is no house %. If you just picked a good group of stocks and let your investment sit there, over all, you will make money- on the average. But not so with sports betting or pretty much any gambling.
My poor grammar. I meant that “the market” historically earns around 10% per year, and someone trying to beat the market risks earning less than that if they have fees to pay. They also incur opportunity cost by “doing their own research”, which is not expected to do better than just buying an index fund or two and walking away.
Which is still light years better than trying to beat the house at a casino. All that fancy stuff is built with money taken from people trying to beat the house.
But you see, with a 1% fee, you dont have to “beat the market”, you can just go with the flow and bank roughly 9% a year, year after year, with little risk. Still- some risk, mind you.
Are there subscription or paid services for betting advice? I could see lots of that popping up around legal sports betting. If people aren’t doing well, they may decide to pay someone for advice on which bets to place so they can win it back.
Related to that, I remember a Simpsons episode a long time ago where Homer heard of a 1-900 number which offered betting advice. If you remember, you got charged per-minute when you called those numbers. Homer calls to find out who’s going to win the football game. The line picks up and the voice speaks very slowly and drags things out, like “In … today’s … game … the … weather … will … be … from … the … south … etc”. Homer is saying “C’mon! C’mon!” trying to get them to just say who will win all the while as charges keep racking up. I would guess that there could be services like that today which give dubious advice while draining the person’s wallet.
Yup. I remember, as a high schooler (so, around 1980), having a copy of “Street & Smith’s Pro Football Annual,” a magazine which came out every year during the pre-season, with profiles and previews of each NFL team.
That was long before any legal sports wagering outside of the Nevada sports books, but even so, the magazine still had several ads for weekly newsletters that one could subscribe to, with gambling tips for pro and college football games.
I remember seeing extended infomercials around 1990 on Saturday morning TV offering just such services. They featured several tipsters touting their experiences and credentials, ending in a pitch to call their exclusive 900 number, which often cost a single 50-dollar-ish lump sum, for which the caller got all of the tipsters’ picks. Which was, I guess, one notch more honest than the per-minute services Homer was dealing with.
The infomercials were memorable for the accents and the sportcoats.
Yes, the Racing Form does contain selections and commentary, and has for years.
Not sure if it still does, but it did once have a column, typically on Saturdays and Sundays, with sports selections and commentary, for those who wished to wager on more than racing.
ETA: And like the linked song says, horseplayers really do write “Can do” in their notes in their Forms.
Capitalism will not work unless a fraction of investors are trying to beat the market. So there is social utility to allowing stock picking.
Except for horse racing, professional sports WILL work without gambling. So there is no need for most sports betting. I wouldn’t try to stop it, but it’s OK to discourage it.