Hi all,I was wondering if sports betting industry is hot nowadays. I have already made an app in C# that connects to a respectable betting broker and places bets (working as a freelance, in parallel to my main quant job). There is a chance that I will be offered a (higher paying) job in R&D sports betting in the next few days and maybe I will keep both as long as I can. I was wondering if this represents a step forward or backward in my career. Funds close all over the place, Sports betting industry (I think that) is growing. I also believe that since it is not remote to hedge fund quant roles that perhaps I could return back to quant roles if necessary in the future.Is here anyone that believes that there is an upward trend in sports betting quant roles? Or anyone that has made the transition?Thank you!

I'd be looking at this as potentially a zig-zag, rather than there and back again."Forward" implies some sort of absolute direction and if your ambitions lie in the direction trading, it could be a good move, thoiugh less for classical quant or risk work.

Quote"Forward" implies some sort of absolute direction and if your ambitions lie in the direction trading, it could be a good move, thoiugh less for classical quant or risk work.I don't quite follow why you think this. Do you believe there are closer similarities between financial trading and sports trading, than between financial modelling and sports modelling? I would tend to think the reverse.CommodityQuant

My reason for saying that is that some people in the various types of trading like to see that you can do stuff that makes money in the context of risk taking.It's a mindset thing as well as a skillset of itself, independent of which maths and programming skills you apply.That's less important for risk jobs,which are of course far more numerous, but talking to traders I have learned that their intuition of risk is philosophically different to that of people who work in risk.So if you've been making money with maths, though gambling or personal trading they will ask about your risk management, but be looking for a different attitude, even if the maths happen to be the same.Indeed one failure mode for people who want to get into trading who cite their personal trading/gambling experience, is that they think that success alone is enough, but look bad when asked about how they managed risk.Process is a big thing in risk management, as is reporting, not so much in trading.Also dfeynman is being offered what sounds like a job where he will be asked to identify ways of making money from stochastic processes in a market. That's a fine skillset to have for trading, less so for risk, so what we have here is itself taking a position with his career as the capital at risk. Jobs in risk are liquid and numerous, trading jobs are fewer but more valuable and he is exposed to the variability of the job market in (say)2-3 yyears time when he looks at banking jobs.There is a far from perfect math of course, liquidity is a different thing in sports betting, market manipulation seems not only to be legal but sometime actually required and compliance in general is quite different.Of course I've simplified here to structure a thought process, whilst writing this I was thinking of one head of risk at a rather respectable firm who'd probably interview dfeynman solely on the sort of experience he believes he will get.I'm basing this advice on a very small lump of information supplied by dfeynman who himself won't have been told the whole story, because no one ever is.It may be that they want him to do risk for them, which is a bit less attractive, or to get involved using C# to do the user interface for punters or to connect to some other system, making it basically an IT job.Personally I think the coding job is not the most likely scenario,mostly because they can hire a straight C# developer for less than a quant/developer.

QuoteOriginally posted by: dfeynmanHi all,I was wondering if sports betting industry is hot nowadays. I have already made an app in C# that connects to a respectable betting broker and places bets (working as a freelance, in parallel to my main quant job). There is a chance that I will be offered a (higher paying) job in R&D sports betting in the next few days and maybe I will keep both as long as I can. I was wondering if this represents a step forward or backward in my career. Funds close all over the place, Sports betting industry (I think that) is growing. I also believe that since it is not remote to hedge fund quant roles that perhaps I could return back to quant roles if necessary in the future.Is here anyone that believes that there is an upward trend in sports betting quant roles? Or anyone that has made the transition?Thank you!I don't work in sports betting but I know there are a few big sports traders in London employing quite a few people in quant/programming jobs. I don't know your career trajectory plan, but the barrier to trading in most sports markets is pretty low, so if it's trading you're interested in you'd might as well do it at home on your own. As for transitions, from people I've spoken to it seems like finance -> sports betting is more common than the other way around, with people citing better 'lifestyle' (more 9-5) as a reason for switching.

Quotebut the barrier to trading in most sports markets is pretty lowYes, in the literal sense that you don't need to invest much money. However, the spread is enormous compared to financial trading. For example, in a tennis match between equally good players, typical odds are 5/6, 5/6. In financial terms, this is an option which costs $545.45 to buy but can only be sold for $454.54. Yes, you might be able to get a better deal by shopping around between bookmakers and betting exchanges but the spread will still be huge. Also, you will get kicked out if you win.CommodityQuant

A clarification: When I say "you will get kicked out if you win", I mean that bookmakers are (of course) not happy to retain customers when there is evidence that the customer's wins will be greater than the customer's losses in the long run. How about betting exchanges rather than bookmakers? I think that arbitrage arguments indicate it is difficult to get a profit there, too. Here is my argument. Betting exchanges have "Premium charges" for successful customers. Suppose this charge is n% of your gross profits. Suppose that people can be so successful that, even with the Premium charges, they can earn a healthy salary, perhaps $100,000 USD. The CEO of the betting exchange then would think "X is able to earn $100 000 from us. Since betting is fun anyway, I'm sure X would be more than happy to be our customer if we increased the "Premium charges" of X (and people like X) such that their yearly net wins are only $10 000. This nets us an extra $90 000 for X alone."I'm not saying no one can ever be a consistent winner ever, but it's just a lot harder than people think, and most importantly, it really is _irresponsible_ to write publicly that "you might as well [gamble on sports] at home on your own."CommodityQuant

QuoteOriginally posted by: CommodityQuantQuotebut the barrier to trading in most sports markets is pretty lowYes, in the literal sense that you don't need to invest much money. However, the spread is enormous compared to financial trading. For example, in a tennis match between equally good players, typical odds are 5/6, 5/6. In financial terms, this is an option which costs $545.45 to buy but can only be sold for $454.54. Yes, you might be able to get a better deal by shopping around between bookmakers and betting exchanges but the spread will still be huge. Also, you will get kicked out if you win.Your example isn't quite right. You're buying something at 6/11 (probability of winning, not odds) which should be 5.5/11 so you're overpaying by 0.5 in 5.5 or 1/11 (~9%) not the 20% markup you have.Two equally good players at 5/6 would correspond to an overround of 12/11 or 109%.However your information is also out of date. On Betfair you might well see a book of 102% (back) - 98% (lay) for two equally good players. Exchanges don't kick out big successful players (why would they?). They give them special low commission rates instead.

QuoteOriginally posted by: MattFQuoteYour example isn't quite right. You're buying something at 6/11 (probability of winning, not odds) which should be 5.5/11 so you're overpaying by 0.5 in 5.5 or 1/11 (~9%) not the 20% markup you have.Two equally good players at 5/6 would correspond to an overround of 12/11 or 109%.However your information is also out of date. On Betfair you might well see a book of 102% (back) - 98% (lay) for two equally good players. Exchanges don't kick out big successful players (why would they?). They give them special low commission rates instead.There's nothing wrong with my example, and there's nothing wrong with your calculations either. We're just discussing two different scenarios. I was talking about buying and selling the same bet. You buy something for X and sell something for Y. You want to buy a contract to receive 1000 if A wins -- this costs what I said -- 545.54. You then want to close out your position (for example by betting on the other player). Closing out your position leads to you receiving 1000 - 545.54 = 454.45 (approximately -- I'm truncating decimals here) which is also exactly as I said.I never said there was a 20% markup. Of course, 102% to 98% on Betfair is not the full story. The winner has to pay a (hefty) commission on top of that. So your comment (although accurate) really doesn't make much sense since it just ignores part of Betfair's edge. Bookmakers (not betting exchanges) kick out big successful players -- I said that in my clarifying follow-up post.If you win at Betfair, you get specially high commission rates -- these are called "Premium charges".I'm a bit disappointed that, in a forum likely to be frequented by students, we're getting a lot of ignorant postings on this thread suggesting it's feasible to make lots of easy money from sports betting.CommodityQuant