Week 9: How Betting Sites Get Us to Keep Coming Back

Welcome to Week 9 of my Genius Hour Project on how math and stats are inherent when betting on sports. I hope that you all had as terrific of a week as me; my own favourite sports team, the Tampa Bay Lightning, won their season debut! It was an exciting week of sports as hockey started up again, basketball continued, and NFL playoffs began! My main goal for this week was to investigate some strategies that are used by gambling companies and the Bookmakers to entice their consumers. In other words, I asked the question: What causes sports bettors to keep coming back for more?

I was able to learn so much again this week! One Bookmaker strategy that I learned more about are “parimutuel odds”, as oppose to “fixed odds” (Business Reporter, 2020). Fixed odds mean you are wagering and winning (or losing) what the odds signify. For example, if there is a 50/50 odds of winning (i.e., flipping a coin), fixed odds would state that you win $1 on a $1 wager ($2 total). It’s simple math, right? Well, it isn’t quite that easy when it comes to sports betting! As we have learned, most betting companies would only give you around $0.80 if you win this same bet! Yet, many individuals keep coming back and thinking that they’re playing a “fair game” when they are actually already down a few dollars (or hundreds of dollars) from the get-go. My goal is to educate my students on this type of subjugation and teach them that looking further into the math of gambling makes more sense!

Another strategy that companies use is like one that retail, grocery, and all other companies use: using competing prices! Although the quality of all sites is virtually the same, it is the prices wagered and the returns that matter. Betting lines are not always equal when it comes to the lines that competing online sportsbooks offer on the same bet. There can be many reasons for this, but it often comes down to what the betting site expects the outcome will be and how much money they have coming in on either side of the bet (Gambling Sites, 2020). A lot of the time, this leads to people having accounts with multiple betting sites. However, this allows for more bets to be made and almost always leads to more losses! It is important for individuals, especially those who are good with numbers, to realize that the “best prices” are not always the ideal option. If my students choose to gamble their money in the future, I want them to understand how to do it safely and stick with one betting site!

My hope for this blog was that exploring why sports bettors are so interested in continuing to bet would provide me with crucial insight as a math teacher. I figure that by knowing this, I can address some strategies in my classroom for combatting these techniques used by major companies. Subsequently, my students would prosper by knowing when enough is enough, and knowing when to walk away from the betting game (or not to start betting to begin with)!

For next week’s research, I will be getting more in-depth with my topic by relating what I have already learned about sports betting with some mathematical and statistical facts and understandings. This will really help my project and assist me in moving forward with research on how statistics are used in sports betting.

References

Business Reporter. (2020). How Do Betting Sites Make Money? The Kenyan Wall Street. https://kenyanwallstreet.com/how-do-betting-sites-make-money/  

Gambling Sites. (2020). Why You Should Use Multiple Betting Sites. https://www.gamblingsites.org/sports-betting/getting-started/using-multiple-sites/