Over/Under: Probability Versus Passion
By Myles Valentin-Capiral
For the Toronto sports fan, 1993 marks a special year. In the spring, the Leafs embarked on an incredible playoff run that put them within one game of the Stanley Cup final against Montreal. Later in the fall, the Blue Jays won their second consecutive World Series with an 8-6 come-back win over Philadelphia in Game 6.
These kinds of experiences are what it’s all about for eager sports fans who commit large amounts of time, money and emotional energy towards supporting their team. But the problem is, it often takes years or even decades for these situations to occur. For the Toronto sports fan in particular, the joys of 1993 have yet to be replicated. From a logical standpoint, one year of joy in exchange for 20 years of misery hardly seems worth it.
Loyalty is one of the most important attributes for sports fans. Watching every game, keeping up with statistics and spending bucket loads money on team merchandise are rites of passage—badges of honour that measure a fan’s worth. In the gambling world, however, loyalty is foolish. Sure, the Florida Panthers may have won you money last month, but that should have zero reflection on the decisions you make today. In fact, the smart gambler is constantly resetting their perspective and analyzes each game from an objective point of view.
One major difference between sports fans and gamblers is neutrality. Here’s an example: sports fans often criticize referees for what they perceive to be bad calls. They see the game through a fisheye lens that emphasizes the highs and lows for their specific team. Gamblers, on the other hand, trade in probabilities more than passion. Over a large sample size of games, the smart gambler knows that a team will benefit and suffer from an equal amount of poor refereeing decisions.
It’s also interesting to note that gambling is often associated with addiction, while being a sports fan is not. If we look at the return on investment (ROI) for both, it’s clear how unjust this assessment is. The return each season, for most sports fans, is almost always a deficit. The costs of tickets, merchandise and cable packages increase each year, but fans still pay-up to support their teams. Most successful gamblers, on the other hand, have an ROI in the 5 to 7 percent range. So while sports fans usually have to wait years to experience the joy of a championship, the gambler can experience a lucrative win in any given week.
There’s no arguing that supporting a sports team can be thrilling and rewarding (sometimes), but at the end of the day, it’s a costly venture when compared to empirical-based gambling.
