All that being said, I still think it is incredible difficult to make a living betting sports. It requires excellent picks, yes, but also even more discipline. If you're playing $1000 a game (WAY more than the $20-$30 that I prefer), you have to go 1-0 or 2-0 in a weekend and just shut it down.
Sports betting is interesting to me, because conceivably if you can (big if) find small inefficiencies in the market (i.e. point spreads that systematically don't correctly price the difference between teams), you could give yourself an edge. If I could do it in a systematic way, and then have the discipline to bet every matchup that meets the right criteria, depending on the size of the edge my methodology gives me. ... well, there would at least be a path to being profitable. It's unlike most games of chance, where there is no possible edge you can give yourself.
I actually make my living this way (it really is quite similar), except in a different kind of market. For that reason, I have looked very closely at sports betting. Where it fails for what I do:
1) The vig sportsbooks charge is a lot to overcome. Having to win 52.4 percent of the time on a standard 10 percent vig, doesn't sound like a lot to people. But it is actually a pretty big "transaction cost." It eats up a lot of any potential edge I might be able to give myself (real edges, at least ones I employ, are very small, usually). There are other markets I have access to where the costs of the transactions don't take it that far away from a 50/50 proposition (without any edge).
2) The edge I actually have with what I do is extremely small. Which is why I was saying in an earlier post that working systematically, rather than in a discretionary way, is almost a necessity. It would also require way more money than I have to actually profit the way I need to. ... which is where leverage enters the equation. I need leverage that doesn't cost anything (i.e. -- not paying a loanshark, or really any rate of margin interest if possible, which would take away any edge I otherwise have and put me on the wrong side of 50/50). I also need that leverage to be high enough to allow me to risk small amounts for a lot of gain (0utsized losses are the other side of that equation). And there are derivatives markets that meet that criteria. As long as I really have an edge, even if it is small, leverage allows me to profit disproportionately to the amount of capital I have.
Near as I was ever able to figure out that isn't possible with sports gambling. I would need a way more money than I can employ in order to exploit a small edge, assuming I even had one.
For that reason, the leverage is really the most important aspect of how I do make my living in something kind of similar. Nothing to do with sports betting, but the leverage introduces a whole other set of considerations, because it is treacherous. It's why more than 95 percent of people fail in highly leveraged markets; lose everything. There is something about human nature that makes people inevitably overleverage themselves, no matter how disciplined they can stay for a time. It eventually catches up with nearly everyone.
