I do for a couple of reasons:
1. There 's a lot of confusion in the sports betting market about what a "sharp" actually is.
If you listen to a lot of the noise there's an awful lot of "sharp" money out there, a lot of people who consider themselves "sharp" and a lot of people who consider others to be "sharp" because they talk. A LOT.
The fact is few of these "sharps" really are.
2. The Public (or square, going forward) money is more prevalent in the market than you think.
A big proportion of so-called "sharp" money is actually "square" money with above average PR. Many touts, so-called 'experts', are as square as it gets if you track their play, examine the lines they grab and follow their results. Also, many touts offer up plays with stale lines (with no disclosure) and cherry-pick results, sometimes slicing the pie so thin it becomes translucent.
I was not surprised all that much then to see the following Bloomberg story about Wall Street deciding they have the analytical chops to dive into sports betting:
Wall Street is wading into sports gambling as legalization spreads. Bloomberg
The line between trading and gambling has always been fuzzy. So now that 13 U.S. states have live legal sports betting and several more have approved it, following a 2018 Supreme Court ruling, it’s natural to wonder if Wall Street will start looking for a piece of the action.A few firms already are. At least one is actually making bets, much as a hedge fund trades stocks. Susquehanna International Group LLP, a quantitative trading firm headquartered in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., is building up a sports betting division in Ireland, where such wagers have long been legal. The business unit, called Nellie Analytics—named after co-founder Jeff Yass’s dog—has about 20 employees.
Of course, this is not the norm, and the article goes on to say that many hedge funds are getting involved by investing in back-end technology but, as an observer of the sports betting world, the above blurb intrigued me because I'm sure this division is going to immediately be classified as "sharp" despite the fact that they're most probably not.
First, they're probably day traders, trying to adjust their modeling to handle sports wagers. Second, they have no track record of prolonged success that would insinuate that they are, in fact, "sharp" at picking lines and placing bets. Third, you primarily see them laying action at retail books, which is the very definition of 'square'.
The the European books are taking their action, with no punitive limits or back-offs, to this date shows that their betting is based on little more than random averages. In short: luck. Even the squarest of bettors can find hit-rates of somewhere around 50%, the sharpest of bettors float around 53-55%. The difference seems small, but is actually huge.
Given the track record of Wall Street it won't be long before these betting divisions gussy themselves up and start operating as 'corporate touts', putting a shiny new coat of paint on a dilapidated business practice that's remarkably similar to investment firms.
You pay regardless of financial outcome. Win or lose, they make money off of your fees and commissions.
Sound familiar?
