> you might as well throw your money at something that has the possibility of making your rich
I don't think anyone is getting rich from sports betting. It's not like the lottery, where the jackpots are massive and the odds are very long. And the jackpots get massive in the lottery because they accumulate when nobody wins, whereas in sports bettings, the gambler always either wins or loses, based on the outcome of the sporting event; there's no carry-over.
You are right customers are not getting rich from sports betting, but the true reason is that once 'the house', the betting company sees a consistent winner, it will ban them or lower their betting limit to discourage them from betting again. There are people that would get rich otherwise. Also betting companies are coordinating their odds to prevent arbitrage.
And also, of course: there are gangs influencing the outcomes of the sport events and selling the bets or organizing betting on them. Fraudster bosses, if they are smart, are absolutely getting rich. And betting company owners too. But you didn't mean those.
> There are people that would get rich otherwise.
This is highly unlikely. Nobody has the magical ability to predict the outcome of sporting events.
> there are gangs influencing the outcomes of the sport events and selling the bets or organizing betting on them. Fraudster bosses, if they are smart, are absolutely getting rich.
This is highly unlikely for most of the things that Americans are gambling on, such as NFL games.
> But you didn't mean those.
It doesn't appear to be what the OP meant.
> This is highly unlikely.
It is my experience from working in the sports betting industry for several years, including the risk reporting and risk managing part. In fact I'm pretty sure several people lived comfortable life by going around our risk management by using a loophole that was possible at the time in our country - it was possible to bet anonymously in person. So while we could limit maximum winnings per bet, we could not tie particular bets to persons, and they just placed several bets in different locations, or they used helpers.
I'm not going into speculations how they acquired the knowledge. Some people are just nerds, others sit at the stadiums and place bets right from there etc., but I'm pretty confident there are customers who are able to make money on sport bets and are not fraudsters.
> several people lived comfortable life
> in our country
A comfortable life in which country?
And "several" means "more than two but not many".
> they used helpers
So, this doesn't sound like just ordinary people who have lost hope.
The thing about lottery tickets, as opposed to sports betting is that the lottery requires zero skill. You buy a ticket, and if you get lucky and your numbers are randomly chosen, you win. Anyone can hope to win the lottery. But becoming a professional sports gambler, or a professional poker player, for example, is not really the usual response to losing hope.
> A comfortable life in which country?
Not that important, if you are able to win 150k USD/EUR a bet several times in a year.
> So, this doesn't sound like just ordinary people who have lost hope.
Not sure where the 'hope' got in, but in our country ordinary people are perfectly able to enter a bar and ask patrons to place a bet in exchange for a beer and a vodka. In fact the bar and the betting shop are often the same place.
> But becoming a professional sports gambler, or a professional poker player, for example, is not really the usual response to losing hope.
It's not the usual response but there is a sort of people who do this. They will not work 9-5 a stable good paying job although they are able to, but absolutely will put huge effort into finding a way to make money any other way.
> Not sure where the 'hope' got in
That's where this discussion started! From the OP: "It’s reflective of people losing hope in the system’s ability to make their lives better."
You've taken the discussion off on a tangent that's mostly unrelated to the original point that I was addressing.
Well I hope the reader now understands that it is sometimes possible to make money by betting.
I was quite interested in one of the CEOs from a premier league team who runs StarLizard which is a private gambling syndicate focused on sports. They're making a lot of money off building models to predict sport outcomes.
I'm not sure if you'd discount that as obviously thats completely different than 1 person sitting in their bedroom placing bets but just thought I'd raise it incase this level of sports betting interests you.
From what I understand they place their bets in Asian markets rather than the markets consumers in the west would.
The punchline is that sports gambling companies aren't even getting rich either. Their spend on advertisement and promotions to draw people in is so high that they're losing money net. Of course given means right now sports betting is just producing suffering en masse, not even making a few people rich it is a punchline in the same sense as 'The Aristocrats'.