NESN The NESN ticker isn't going away and the dream is viewers betting using their remotes

[GoBs]

The ticker is a laugher
All the baseball scores during the playoff game

 

[GordonHowe]

This feels depressing.

Have your food brought to you by Uber Eats, stay home and watch neverending streaming services, then gamble from your couch or bed.

I could make a millennial joke. But I won't.

 

[talkinaway]

Sports gambling and the stock market are the same thing in principle. Putting money into speculation over performance.

That's overly fatalistic for the stock market. For the typical investor, stock market investing is VERY different from sports gambling.

I'm not talking about day trading, options, selling short, and all the various shenanigans that unqualified people can pull off with a discount online brokerage account nowadays. If you're tracking companies, picking a bunch of solid ones to invest a small portion of your portfolio, and also holding a diversified mutual fund, and investing for the long term, which is probably what most people should do...that is FAR from gambling, for two important reasons:

1) It's not random. Your company sells more widgets, and spends less on making widgets, then your stock value increases. Maybe the second or third decimal point is a bit random. Maybe determining whether Google or Apple is a better tech stock is...a bit random. But picking Apple over, say, Sears?

I'm sorry, but sports gambling IS random. The lines and odds ratios are drawn so that, theoretically, everyone's getting screwed equally by "the vig". If a game is expected to have 5.5 goals on average, then that's the line. Maybe there are small places where you can find a tiny, tiny little edge if the hive mind hasn't noticed something....but that's equivalent to day trading, IMO.

2) The long-term EV in the stock market is historically positive. Plunk $1000 in a mutual fund that indexes the S&P 500 (which is what Warren Buffett wants his wife to do with most his estate when he dies), and you'll do very, very well in 30 years. The long-term EV in any type of gambling scenario run by a profitable enterprise is, by definition, negative. (Unless, of course, you're the bookie.)

The slightly better analogy would be that sports gambling is similar to poker. Yes, it's not a slot machine - there IS skill involved in both in picking "winners". But it's not profitable in the long run for most people.

 

[McGarnagle]

That's overly fatalistic for the stock market. For the typical investor, stock market investing is VERY different from sports gambling.

I'm not talking about day trading, options, selling short, and all the various shenanigans that unqualified people can pull off with a discount online brokerage account nowadays. If you're tracking companies, picking a bunch of solid ones to invest a small portion of your portfolio, and also holding a diversified mutual fund, and investing for the long term, which is probably what most people should do...that is FAR from gambling, for two important reasons:

1) It's not random. Your company sells more widgets, and spends less on making widgets, then your stock value increases. Maybe the second or third decimal point is a bit random. Maybe determining whether Google or Apple is a better tech stock is...a bit random. But picking Apple over, say, Sears?

I'm sorry, but sports gambling IS random. The lines and odds ratios are drawn so that, theoretically, everyone's getting screwed equally by "the vig". If a game is expected to have 5.5 goals on average, then that's the line. Maybe there are small places where you can find a tiny, tiny little edge if the hive mind hasn't noticed something....but that's equivalent to day trading, IMO.

2) The long-term EV in the stock market is historically positive. Plunk $1000 in a mutual fund that indexes the S&P 500 (which is what Warren Buffett wants his wife to do with most his estate when he dies), and you'll do very, very well in 30 years. The long-term EV in any type of gambling scenario run by a profitable enterprise is, by definition, negative. (Unless, of course, you're the bookie.)

The slightly better analogy would be that sports gambling is similar to poker. Yes, it's not a slot machine - there IS skill involved in both in picking "winners". But it's not profitable in the long run for most people.

True, they're not a 1:1 analogue in any sense. There's more volatility and it's handicapped by bookies to maximize the house take, though like the market, it's based at heart on speculation.

Though if you laid down a consistent bet on the Yankees and Patriots over a full season or two, it'd be a safe investment that would yield a modest amount, similar to a safe index fund.