10 ms·

Last time this was discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16985413 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16985413 I've noticed a little uptick in stori

Last time this was discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16985413 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16985413 I've noticed a little uptick in stories about gambling here, I suspect there is a strain of us at HN interested in sports analytics for financial gain. Interesting. :-)

bitexploder 7y ago
Fantasy football season as well. Folks are probably dusting off their spreadsheets and doing a little sport analytics right now.
- mikorym 7y ago
  So maybe with 500 parameters one could do football? 121) Last time player had a happy meal 122) Amount of times drunk at training . . . 499) Hours spent playing FIFA 20 on console 500) Fashionability of latest hairstyle
jjuel 7y ago
I know there is at least one person interested in sports analytics for financial gain here ;)
- westonplatter0 7y ago
  Why not just gamble on Wall Street with fancy algos and options?
  - abakker 7y ago
    if you suspect you aren't the most sophisticated gambler, then maybe it doesn't pay? Honestly, sports betting is orders of magnitude less sophisticated than Wall Street, so you have a better chance of finding an edge that others haven't also found.
    - kratom_sandwich 7y ago
      Also, it's easy to imagine that there are a lot of "unskilled" betters, i.e. old folks betting for the thrill of it, people betting a few bucks just for kicks, ... With wall street, there might be a few unskilled people, but they are probably a small minority.
    - user5994461 7y ago
      They're both the exact same thing when it comes to exchanges. I was working for a betting exchange and a market maker for a while, taking 500 orders a second and arbitraging between different competitors, before moving back to finance. It's quite interesting actually. A lot of the market is not tradable though. On one end of the market, gambling is often a state monopoly with high spread and high margins (if not prohibited entirely), while on the other end there are large trades going on in private or closed circles.
  - Mathnerd314 7y ago
    Wall Street has a higher barrier to entry, AFAICT. Hedge funds need capital and subscriptions to proprietary signals, HFT needs colocation. But there are enough one-offs of people making money on Wall Street that I suspect it is (relatively) common, just not reported on in the news.
  - blackflame7000 7y ago
    Because in sport, all the information is out in the open whereas in wall street it is concealed in boardroom deals.
    - ses1984 7y ago
      >in sport, all the information is out in the open LOL.
      - blackflame7000 7y ago
        So I guess in your mind, pro's watch tape of their opponents for fun?
        ses1984 7y ago
        My brother in law is a physical therapist. He was recently flown first class to treat a starting NFL quarterback. Do you think what transpired during that appointment is public?
        blackflame7000 7y ago
        The NFL requires teams to report all injuries no matter how minor. https://operations.nfl.com/media/2683/2017-nfl-injury-report-policy.pdf https://operations.nfl.com/media/2683/2017-nfl-injury-report...
        ses1984 7y ago
        Ok and? Is the report the same as being there?
        blackflame7000 7y ago
        Is reading a quarterly earnings report the same as being in the boardroom? Of course not. If perfect knowledge were attainable this whole money-making business would be a lot easier. In sports, you can get information on how a player has performed historically as well as recently in order to make educated guesses on how they will perform in the future. In business, you have no access to R&D information. You have no idea if a company's past success will bring future success. You have no way of knowing if they have hit a snag or a breakthrough in R&D until after it's hit the market and if you do, you are likely breaking insider trading laws. In sports, you can study your opponent to predict what they might do. In business, you can really only study what your opponent did during the actual game so to speak. For example, Microsoft can't wait for Sony to release the PS4 in order to develop a game plan for the Xbox. Both have to put forward their best effort regardless of what the competition may or may not do. In sport, you are training to beat 1 opponent, in business you are trying to appeal to the whims of the multifaceted consumer which aren't nearly as concrete.
  - jjuel 7y ago
    Sports interests me more. I would rather spend time looking at sports analytics than Wall Street analytics.
  - hogFeast 7y ago
    ROI is insane. If you made 20% a year on Wall Street, you are crushing it. You can make 20% a month in sports gambling with a fairly pedestrian strategy. The only issue is that you can't scale well but this only becomes an issue when you need to put down tens of million a week (i.e. when you have $50m+). The barriers to entry are also getting higher as competition is increasing in the space (although limits are probably going up too). One big issue right now is data. If you bet on soccer (the sport with the highest limits), you need to spend at least $100-200k/year (before hiring programmers) on data to become competitive.
    - paulpauper 7y ago
      >You can make 20% a month in sports gambling with a fairly pedestrian strategy. then after 2 years you would have billions of dollars. yeah right
      - ucha 7y ago
        Parent comment said you can't scale.
        paulpauper 7y ago
        Sports betting is huge. this is not 30 years ago. you can easily scale millions into bets/ and most ppl would be very happy to make $30 million out of $5k or so over a decade.
      - hogFeast 7y ago
        Yes, most of the people at the top are billionaires. Tony Bloom owns Brighton FC, Benter is a billionaire (probably, he made several hundred million in HK), Billy Walters is likely close, Ranogajec, Alan Woods is close, Benham is likely close (or was before he decided to buy several football clubs). The issue, as I said initially, is that you aren't scalable past $100m or so (without connections to the Asian books, which some people above have...apparently, some of the guys are able to put down multiple millions on most European soccer leagues...which isn't available to most). But yes, most of the funds run by the above people have been making 100%+ for years.
  - samstave 7y ago
    Because you need very fast network cards and a lot of fiber. So the costs are much higher... (I cant recall the name of the company that makes these super highend net cards, which hedgefunds prefer)
  - davidmr 7y ago
    You can do both. Job postings from at least a couple well-known HFT firms shows that they’re getting into sports betting.
  - bori5 7y ago
    When you use somebody else’s money it’s called trading.
exogeny 7y ago
It’s sort of amazing that given the fast-moving legalization of sports betting, there hasn’t been a lot of VC action in the space, either on the platform side or on the content/services side. I can count on one hand the number of funded companies over the past six or seven years, and I can think of only one that has exited. Might have something to do with vice provisions dictated by LPs, but it certainly seems like a ripe growth area.
- hogFeast 7y ago
  There are an absolute ton of companies working in this area (mostly in the UK). But the reason they don't need VC capital is simple...they make a ton of money already (VC funds are naturally interested in capital-intensive businesses that are kind of junky...companies in this sector aren't capital-intensive and are usually obscenely profitable).
  - pmart123 7y ago
    I won’t say that’s exactly true. I know Founder’s fund have invested in a couple. I think the need for scale limits VC funded options to companies that are building things like a gambling exchange, but at that point, the funding sources might be better from quant traders/hedge funds as its closer to a capital markets type business. For instance: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-30/sports-gambling-is-quant-trading-firm-s-way-to-beat-market-odds https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-30/sports-ga...
    - hogFeast 7y ago
      The US market is not representative at all. It is basically nothing (and Susequehana's operation isn't large). Exchanges are cumulatively worth tens of billions and they are a tiny part of the market. Again, most of the people involved have no interest in VCs (I know a few people starting exchanges). They know nothing, and they usually have less money than them anyway.
- samstave 7y ago
  It would be super funny if there was a website where people could gamble on “pick a number between X and N” And where N was differing ranges such that you ccould gamble in the pick a number between 1-10 Or go to a diff room when N was between 1-100, and others like 1-1000 etc And the anti was diff for each and the payoff diff based on paying out from the antis (i dont. Know how to spell anti)
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
I think HN is just generally interested in financial gain and doesn't mind bending ethical guidelines for that cause. I mean, they do have a high incidence of people working for tech companies.
- MegaButts 7y ago
  Do you believe tech companies are inherently less ethical than non-tech companies?
- artursapek 7y ago
  I wouldn't say HN crowd is significantly greedier/more selfish than other online communities
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    Probably not, though tech industry employees do tend to wave around their "total compensation" numbers in a chest-thumping competition. I see that less as "greedy" though, and more as a mistaken proxy for personal value/competence/etc. The same thing seems to happen in the finance/banking industry. I suppose anywhere you gather very well compensated people in high concentrations it's going to happen. The actual money is only part of the phenomenon.
    - ct520 7y ago
      Well said, never thought about it that way.
- on_and_off 7y ago
  Would predicting the results of a horse ride count as unethical for you ?
  - chillydawg 7y ago
    If you win a bet, someone else loses one. Losers lose money to bookies, bookies very rarely lose it on to winners. Many people can enjoy responsible gambling. Many people cannot. Therefore, any time you win a bet, you're winning money from someone who can't stop. In my view it's similar ethically to owning tobacco or alcohol stock.
blockchainman 7y ago
This is very true ! :)
ohithereyou 7y ago
>I suspect there is a strain of us at HN interested in sports analytics for financial gain I would assume that people who post to Hacker News, as a rule, are less risk averse than the general populace due to Hacker News being more focused, in my mind, in the entrepreneurial side of technology.
- Smithalicious 7y ago
  I think you're right compared to the general "tech" populace, but I think tech people as a whole are more risk averse than the general populace.

bitexploder 7y ago

Fantasy football season as well. Folks are probably dusting off their spreadsheets and doing a little sport analytics right now.

mikorym 7y ago
So maybe with 500 parameters one could do football? 121) Last time player had a happy meal 122) Amount of times drunk at training . . . 499) Hours spent playing FIFA 20 on console 500) Fashionability of latest hairstyle

jjuel 7y ago

I know there is at least one person interested in sports analytics for financial gain here ;)

westonplatter0 7y ago
Why not just gamble on Wall Street with fancy algos and options?
- abakker 7y ago
  if you suspect you aren't the most sophisticated gambler, then maybe it doesn't pay? Honestly, sports betting is orders of magnitude less sophisticated than Wall Street, so you have a better chance of finding an edge that others haven't also found.
  - kratom_sandwich 7y ago
    Also, it's easy to imagine that there are a lot of "unskilled" betters, i.e. old folks betting for the thrill of it, people betting a few bucks just for kicks, ... With wall street, there might be a few unskilled people, but they are probably a small minority.
  - user5994461 7y ago
    They're both the exact same thing when it comes to exchanges. I was working for a betting exchange and a market maker for a while, taking 500 orders a second and arbitraging between different competitors, before moving back to finance. It's quite interesting actually. A lot of the market is not tradable though. On one end of the market, gambling is often a state monopoly with high spread and high margins (if not prohibited entirely), while on the other end there are large trades going on in private or closed circles.
- Mathnerd314 7y ago
  Wall Street has a higher barrier to entry, AFAICT. Hedge funds need capital and subscriptions to proprietary signals, HFT needs colocation. But there are enough one-offs of people making money on Wall Street that I suspect it is (relatively) common, just not reported on in the news.
- blackflame7000 7y ago
  Because in sport, all the information is out in the open whereas in wall street it is concealed in boardroom deals.
  - ses1984 7y ago
    >in sport, all the information is out in the open LOL.
    - blackflame7000 7y ago
      So I guess in your mind, pro's watch tape of their opponents for fun?
      - ses1984 7y ago
        My brother in law is a physical therapist. He was recently flown first class to treat a starting NFL quarterback. Do you think what transpired during that appointment is public?
        blackflame7000 7y ago
        The NFL requires teams to report all injuries no matter how minor. https://operations.nfl.com/media/2683/2017-nfl-injury-report-policy.pdf https://operations.nfl.com/media/2683/2017-nfl-injury-report...
        ses1984 7y ago
        Ok and? Is the report the same as being there?
        blackflame7000 7y ago
        Is reading a quarterly earnings report the same as being in the boardroom? Of course not. If perfect knowledge were attainable this whole money-making business would be a lot easier. In sports, you can get information on how a player has performed historically as well as recently in order to make educated guesses on how they will perform in the future. In business, you have no access to R&D information. You have no idea if a company's past success will bring future success. You have no way of knowing if they have hit a snag or a breakthrough in R&D until after it's hit the market and if you do, you are likely breaking insider trading laws. In sports, you can study your opponent to predict what they might do. In business, you can really only study what your opponent did during the actual game so to speak. For example, Microsoft can't wait for Sony to release the PS4 in order to develop a game plan for the Xbox. Both have to put forward their best effort regardless of what the competition may or may not do. In sport, you are training to beat 1 opponent, in business you are trying to appeal to the whims of the multifaceted consumer which aren't nearly as concrete.
- jjuel 7y ago
  Sports interests me more. I would rather spend time looking at sports analytics than Wall Street analytics.
- hogFeast 7y ago
  ROI is insane. If you made 20% a year on Wall Street, you are crushing it. You can make 20% a month in sports gambling with a fairly pedestrian strategy. The only issue is that you can't scale well but this only becomes an issue when you need to put down tens of million a week (i.e. when you have $50m+). The barriers to entry are also getting higher as competition is increasing in the space (although limits are probably going up too). One big issue right now is data. If you bet on soccer (the sport with the highest limits), you need to spend at least $100-200k/year (before hiring programmers) on data to become competitive.
  - paulpauper 7y ago
    >You can make 20% a month in sports gambling with a fairly pedestrian strategy. then after 2 years you would have billions of dollars. yeah right
    - ucha 7y ago
      Parent comment said you can't scale.
      - paulpauper 7y ago
        Sports betting is huge. this is not 30 years ago. you can easily scale millions into bets/ and most ppl would be very happy to make $30 million out of $5k or so over a decade.
    - hogFeast 7y ago
      Yes, most of the people at the top are billionaires. Tony Bloom owns Brighton FC, Benter is a billionaire (probably, he made several hundred million in HK), Billy Walters is likely close, Ranogajec, Alan Woods is close, Benham is likely close (or was before he decided to buy several football clubs). The issue, as I said initially, is that you aren't scalable past $100m or so (without connections to the Asian books, which some people above have...apparently, some of the guys are able to put down multiple millions on most European soccer leagues...which isn't available to most). But yes, most of the funds run by the above people have been making 100%+ for years.
- samstave 7y ago
  Because you need very fast network cards and a lot of fiber. So the costs are much higher... (I cant recall the name of the company that makes these super highend net cards, which hedgefunds prefer)
- davidmr 7y ago
  You can do both. Job postings from at least a couple well-known HFT firms shows that they’re getting into sports betting.
- bori5 7y ago
  When you use somebody else’s money it’s called trading.

exogeny 7y ago

It’s sort of amazing that given the fast-moving legalization of sports betting, there hasn’t been a lot of VC action in the space, either on the platform side or on the content/services side. I can count on one hand the number of funded companies over the past six or seven years, and I can think of only one that has exited. Might have something to do with vice provisions dictated by LPs, but it certainly seems like a ripe growth area.

hogFeast 7y ago
There are an absolute ton of companies working in this area (mostly in the UK). But the reason they don't need VC capital is simple...they make a ton of money already (VC funds are naturally interested in capital-intensive businesses that are kind of junky...companies in this sector aren't capital-intensive and are usually obscenely profitable).
- pmart123 7y ago
  I won’t say that’s exactly true. I know Founder’s fund have invested in a couple. I think the need for scale limits VC funded options to companies that are building things like a gambling exchange, but at that point, the funding sources might be better from quant traders/hedge funds as its closer to a capital markets type business. For instance: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-30/sports-gambling-is-quant-trading-firm-s-way-to-beat-market-odds https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-30/sports-ga...
  - hogFeast 7y ago
    The US market is not representative at all. It is basically nothing (and Susequehana's operation isn't large). Exchanges are cumulatively worth tens of billions and they are a tiny part of the market. Again, most of the people involved have no interest in VCs (I know a few people starting exchanges). They know nothing, and they usually have less money than them anyway.
samstave 7y ago
It would be super funny if there was a website where people could gamble on “pick a number between X and N” And where N was differing ranges such that you ccould gamble in the pick a number between 1-10 Or go to a diff room when N was between 1-100, and others like 1-1000 etc And the anti was diff for each and the payoff diff based on paying out from the antis (i dont. Know how to spell anti)

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

I think HN is just generally interested in financial gain and doesn't mind bending ethical guidelines for that cause. I mean, they do have a high incidence of people working for tech companies.

MegaButts 7y ago
Do you believe tech companies are inherently less ethical than non-tech companies?
artursapek 7y ago
I wouldn't say HN crowd is significantly greedier/more selfish than other online communities
- ineedasername 7y ago
  Probably not, though tech industry employees do tend to wave around their "total compensation" numbers in a chest-thumping competition. I see that less as "greedy" though, and more as a mistaken proxy for personal value/competence/etc. The same thing seems to happen in the finance/banking industry. I suppose anywhere you gather very well compensated people in high concentrations it's going to happen. The actual money is only part of the phenomenon.
  - ct520 7y ago
    Well said, never thought about it that way.
on_and_off 7y ago
Would predicting the results of a horse ride count as unethical for you ?
- chillydawg 7y ago
  If you win a bet, someone else loses one. Losers lose money to bookies, bookies very rarely lose it on to winners. Many people can enjoy responsible gambling. Many people cannot. Therefore, any time you win a bet, you're winning money from someone who can't stop. In my view it's similar ethically to owning tobacco or alcohol stock.

blockchainman 7y ago

This is very true ! :)

ohithereyou 7y ago

>I suspect there is a strain of us at HN interested in sports analytics for financial gain I would assume that people who post to Hacker News, as a rule, are less risk averse than the general populace due to Hacker News being more focused, in my mind, in the entrepreneurial side of technology.

Smithalicious 7y ago
I think you're right compared to the general "tech" populace, but I think tech people as a whole are more risk averse than the general populace.