As you all know sports betting is the in thing today. The bug has caught up with us and it’s not going to die soon. This involves speculating on the outcomes of sporting events in order to gain monetarily. It is big business all over the world and is certain to be big business here as well.
Speculation in business is the act of engaging in financial transactions that have an element of risk especially in the short term with the hope of making a profit. A lot business is conducted on the basis of speculation. We have land speculators, stocks speculators, Forex speculators, vehicle speculators etc. A speculator basically deals in a commodity that he does not intend to keep or develop but is only interested in passing it forward for a profit within the shortest time possible.
One peculiar characteristic of speculative business is that its sole purpose is only to move money. Money is the main business while the commodity is of secondary interest. It is crucial in that for an economy to grow money has to change hands. When money stays in too few a hands then we basically have a stagnant economy. People are not motivated. People invest in stocks mainly hoping that they rise in value and they are able to quickly sell them at a profit. Few invest for control or for dividend. A stock exchange is set up exactly for this purpose. Even forex trading is based on the same principle. No one who engages in forex business buys forex to keep and look at. It’s always with the aim of selling at a profit. The same case applies to people who engage in speculation of land.
While these businesses are considered as legitimate transactions, they share one characteristic with sports betting; and that is speculation. Speculation involves prediction of future outcomes of events and prices taking into account the factors that influence them. In sports we try to predict the outcome based on teams performance, venue, injury, form, past performance, players etc. In stocks we have company’s results, products, new opportunities and ventures, threats to operation etc. In forex it’s demand and supply projections while in land it’s site, proposed developments, vicinity to utilities, availability of title etc. However, one major difference is that betting is considered gambling while the other speculative transactions are considered as business.
My take is that we should embrace sports betting more as an investment opportunity rather than taking it as gambling. You see, as gambling, limitations are imposed on this activity, for example, there is a limit on the amount of money that you can wager for a bet in most sites. However, there is no limit on the amount of money you can speculate on land, stocks or forex. Yet the motive is the same: to make money quickly. Many will argue that in the later at least on is left with something to hold on to while in a wager one loses all. But it is also possible to be left with useless stocks like eveready, or KQ, or imperial. It’s possible to be left with useless Zimbabwe dollars, or land that no one wants to buy due to tribal skirmishes. You may even speculate on a certain car only for the market to change taste into a completely different car. Then you are left with a useless junk of metal suitable only to take you to your local pub and back. I want to be able to wager one million shillings on a Barcelona match with an odd of 1.2 and I make a clean 200k in less than 2 hours. Or I lose it and move on. But if I were to make single bets, I would only need five low risk low odd matches to recover my initial investment of 1M and play with the profits going forward. That I can do within a few days.
All in all, in as much as speculative businesses are crucial in ensuring money circulates and changes hands more frequently, an economy needs more transactions in actual production in order to really grow. Speculative business only assists producers to access money and commodities. Gambling gurus, what say you.
