Well.. sports betting is basically a market where you buy and sell risk. (You don't often sell at your traditional bookie, but you can hedge to not loose too m

Well.. sports betting is basically a market where you buy and sell risk. (You don't often sell at your traditional bookie, but you can hedge to not loose too much). At it's heart it's just a futures market - the instrument being bought is the bet the bookie is offering you at that moment, and that's that. There's a built in commission in the price you pay to bet. The offerings are set based on both the bookie's view of overall market conditions (he wants customers to bet with him, not with someone else) and his view of the outcome of the wager. And idea book is balanced so that no matter who wins an event, the losers pay the winners and the bookie keeps his 10%. In practice, this generally doesn't happen, and, especially on big events, bookies and the public don't see eye to eye.... there are outcomes in the game that mean the bookie makes no money, or ends up losing quite a bit. Various companies have presented this as both a person to person market, where you can set up your own pricing and odds (betting exchanges) - and I recall one (out of irealand I think?) that was actually set up like a real futures market where you could buy/sell at any point. From the professional bettor's point of view it might not look like the stock market, but it's a market, and there area a lot fewer factors to take into consideration than the stock market - so you get a lot of professional bettors who win, consistently, season over season and make a living at this. All they have to do is statistcally beat the bookies. They do their own calcualtions, their own estimations, all that magic, and watch when the books open for a place where they see an advantage. (The pros usually bet early when the odds are posted, the guys who bet for fun bet up until the last second.)