Lots of individuals enjoy sports, and sports fans often enjoy placing wagers on the outcomes of sports events. Most casual sports bettors lose money over time, creating a bad name for the sports betting industry. But what if we could “even the playing field?”
If we transform sports betting in to a more business-like and professional endeavor, there’s a higher likelihood that we will make the situation for sports betting being an investment.
The Sports Marketplace as being an Asset Class
How can we make the jump from gambling to investing? Working with a team of analysts, economists, and Wall Street professionals – we often toss the phrase “sports investing” around. But what makes something an “asset class?”
An asset class is often described as an investment with a marketplace – that has an inherent return. The sports betting world clearly has a marketplace – but what about a source of returns?
By way of example, investors earn interest on bonds in exchange for lending money. Stockholders earn long-term returns by owning a portion of a business. Some economists state that “sports investors” have a built-in inherent return in the type of “risk transfer.” That is, sports investors can earn returns by helping provide liquidity and transferring risk amongst other sports marketplace participants (such as the betting public and sportsbooks).
Sports Investing Indicators
We takes this investing analogy a step further by studying the sports betting “marketplace.” The same as more traditional assets for example stocks and bonds are based upon price, dividend yield, and rates of interest – the sports marketplace “price” is according to point spreads or money line odds. These lines and odds change over time, the same as stock prices rise and great soccer (Click On this page) fall.
To further our goal of making sports gambling a more business-like endeavor, as well as to study the sports marketplace further, we collect several additional indicators. Above all, we collect public “betting percentages” to study “money flows” and sports marketplace activity. On top of that, just as the financial headlines shout, “Stocks rally on heavy volume,” we also track the amount of betting activity in the sports gambling market.
Sports Marketplace Participants
Earlier, we discussed “risk transfer” and also the sports marketplace participants. Within the sports betting world, the sportsbooks serve a similar purpose as the investing world’s brokers and market-makers. They also sometimes act in manner similar to institutional investors.
In the investing world, the public is referred to as the “small investor.” Similarly, the general public often makes small bets within the sports marketplace. The small bettor often bets with their heart, roots for their favorite teams, and has certain tendencies that will be exploited by other market participants.
“Sports investors” are participants who take on a similar role as a market-maker or institutional investor. Sports investors work with a business-like approach to benefit from sports betting. In effect, they take on a risk transfer role and are able to capture the inherent returns of the sports betting industry.
Contrarian Methods
How can we capture the inherent returns of the sports market? One method is to utilize a contrarian approach and bet against the general public to capture value. This really is one rationale why we collect and study “betting percentages” from several major online sports books. Studying this data permits us to feel the pulse of the market action – and carve out the performance of the “general public.”
This, combined with point spread movement, and also the “volume” of betting activity can give us an perception of what various participants are doing. Our studies show that the public, or “small bettors” – typically underperform in the sports betting industry. This, in return, allows us to systematically capture value by using sports investing methods. Our goal is to apply a systematic and academic approach to the sports betting industry.