Maybe what he meant was playing games but without betting any money.
But I agree that the reason why there are gamblers, that there are money bets is because there are games to bet on. Though not all of the bets happening are games, it is just the popular one.
Compared to trading, I think we have more chance to make money in trading because gambling is not really built for us to make money, but it was built for us to enjoy why we are spending money for operators to be profitable, that's how simple it is, we don't need to think complicated about this thing.