Topic: Why I avoid betting on non-pro sports - page 8. (Read 1348 times)

The market is quite small, making it highly prone to manipulation. It’s like gambling with a 50-50 chance where you’re not even confident in your bet. Plus, there’s limited information available to analyze, which makes it even riskier.

For me, I’d avoid this kind of sport entirely, it seems too vulnerable to match-fixing. With so many professional and popular leagues out there to bet on, why bother with something like this, right? Better to stick with leagues where there’s more transparency and data to work with.

Definitely, they want to promote their site as much as possible. That's their target so their business will continue to exist. Star players are expensive but the return may give them very good profitability.
When it comes to unpopular sports, most bookies won't list it as only few bettors will be interested on these betting lines. It may incur some operational expenses on their part, hence, some of them are not including those sports anymore.

Bookies will prefer to use what many people know to advertise. That is why you will see star players like Messi and Ronaldo and other well known players see offers than players from not well known leagues. What the bookies need is to let people know about their gambling sites. So they target traffic.

I wouldn’t bet on non-pro sports mostly because I wouldn’t care to watch the games. Maybe if it was something ridiculous it might be fun, but college sports to me aren’t worth watching. The only exception is when I want to check out a big up and coming player before they hit the big leagues.

Impressive. I am guessing this is prompted by on of those threads today about unpopular sports to bet on. You marshalled out a lot of points and when you wrote about the little or no pay for those involved in sports, I had to connect the dots to why we see an increase in Match fixing in some unpopular sports. With regards to ethicality, I want to agree that if sports bookies sponsor or even advertise in these unpopular sports, their odds would increase and the players over time would receive better renumeration.

There's a huge reason to avoid betting on unpopular sports.
Usually the teams are not close to a fully professional level which means that their form isn't predictable or reliable. Therefore the odds are really shit.
Unless you have good knowledge of these athletes yourself for some reason, it's not worth the risk.

For instance, if you bet on handball, most athletes in most countries have to have second jobs to sustain their presence in the sport, sometimes even in the top teams on this sport the salary isn't enough. What does this mean? Very few athletes that would otherwise be peak athletes are willing to partake in the sport after a certain point. Each team's performance is therefore hindered by many issues. The same teams playing against each other in a different universe can deliver wildly different results. The small teams can beat the huge ones etc.

And yet, the NCAA, the biggest college league for several sports, makes millions from broadcasting these games, selling rights and sports betting results.
But you would notice that in NCAA, even if you bet on a parlay with 10 games of 1.05 odds, it's more likely you'll be losing because upsets are more common than in a fully professional league.

Athletes in college sports are putting all  this effort and are paid nothing. Did you know that until very recently when there was a huge lawsuit reaching judgment, there was no agreement to compensate college athletes at all in the US?
https://www.thedp.com/article/2024/10/penn-ncaa-settlement-player-payment

So this also brings us to the point where ethicality has to be discussed. If we're spending money betting on a sport, doesn't it feel a little wrong to know the athletes earn nothing or close to nothing from this activity? Maybe at least crypto bookies should take the initiative to fund more small sports associations on the local level.