In investing, you get the time to do research about the action that you're about to do. This will help you find the right investments and probably the best one. In gambling, you can only hope that things would go right and that you're going to win. Investing is so much better in terms of earning money since you can be an expert at a certain field to know well enough that a project will be a successful one.
Yes, for the investment activities you need to go through a proper research work, it is not easy to but your money in something blindly so you have to work for it and find out the best and the secure investment to do so to earn and the gambling is only the game of the luck. If you will be lucky you will win and if not you can never win no matter how skilled and experienced you are.
I'm not just talking about ICOs but all projects in general like startups. Gambling is only good for entertainment purposes compared to investing. But, there are also better things to keep yourself entertained other than gambling.
Not just with ICOs, people go everywhere for investing with their blind balls. In my view, they are not valuing their money that is the reason they are just throwing away their money even they are not finding any entertainments with their "improper investments" doing those like gambling.