Sports Gambling is NOT investing. Period. End of Story.

A recent survey from Nerd Wallet showed that 31% of sports bettors perceive gambling as an investment. This is up from 14% in last year’s survey.*?Here’s the kicker: only 40% of bettors had net gains in the past 12 months. That means 60% were net losers! Here’s another kicker: Approximately 1 in 7 sports bettors say that they’ve gone into debt to continue gambling.

Pop Quiz: A friend tells you that their investment idea is 60% likely to lose money, and you have a 1 in 7 chance of going into debt to keep doing it. Would you invest in it?

Even DraftKings CEO Jason Robbins acknowledged the problem in a recent Forbes article: “It’s an entertainment product. It’s not something that we recommend people looking at as an investment”.** In the same article, Stephen Shapiro, a professor of sports and entertainment at the University of South Carolina called sports betting “more akin to day trading than long term investing”.

Look, we’re not naive enough to suggest that people shouldn’t bet on sports. But if you’re discussing the intricacies of a 10-leg parlay, dissecting each over/under like a “seasoned” analyst, or studying point spreads in the European handball leagues, then there may be a problem. And let’s call it what it is: gambling. In all seriousness, if you think that you may have a gambling problem, you can call the National Problem Gambling Helpline at 1-800-GAMBLER.

If you want to get serious about long-term investing, please contact us for a free consultation.

Please check out our Position Wealth Video Blogs and the Position Wealth Website.

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* https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/2025-sports-betting-and-gambling-survey#:~:text=Around%201%20in%207%20sports,this%20year%20compared%20to%202024.

** https://fortune.com/2025/02/15/sports-betting-investment-draftkings-ceo-jason-robins-dkng-earnings/