Hello Max.

Thanks for posting. It's good to have the bearish point of view so eloquently put, it reminds us all that sports betting is not easy to win at.

I think it's only fair to mention that you have paid for one of our team sport packages again this year, so you must have felt you got pretty reasonable value last year and that your returns were acceptable.

I know you haven't tried any of our individual sports like tennis yet and fair enough, if you're skeptical about the chance of making long term profits I wouldn't expect you to be interested.

However, we have plenty of clients who have given us good feedback about such sports and I don't agree it's as simple as writing down 9 points and then adding up how many are positive and negative. Too subjective.

I could just as easily write

1. Most fans bet on emotion. (Smart bettor gets overs and cleans up.)

2. At some sites you can not only get a big bonus when you join but 5% cash bonus every week. (Smart bettor only needs to break even to cream 5% on turnover.)

3. Due to internet competition on head to head sports, by hunting around you can usually get books down to under 104%, sometimes you even get arbitrages, especially at betting exchanges. Tony has 9/10 on "Super Specials" since the package started. (Smart bettor with good information waits for such opportunities and cleans up.)

Okay, I'm not seriously trying to argue that it's that easy to "clean up", but it is certainly possible to make a living from sports betting because people do it (and some of them are clients of ours.)

I just think it's too simplistic to list a whole lot of errors you can make and and only one positive and deduce that by comparing 9 with 1 you have shown that sports betting is too hard.

Your purchase of a package for two years running shows that you are not quite as pessimistic as you sound either :smile:

Anyway, appreciate your thoughts. At OZmium we do like to stress that, as you point out, it's no walk in the park to make money from betting. It requires discipline and skill. Otherwise everyone would become a professional punter instead of working a boring desk job.

But it can be done, and it's what we're all about at OZmium. Many people are going to gamble anyway even if they're net losers, so if we can ensure that they get substantially better returns than they otherwise would have, we've still been of benefit to them.

Guy West.
Managing Director OZmium Pty Ltd.