Quitting to pursue arbitrage sports betting
Hi guys,
I currently work at a big 4 in valuations, but in my spare time I have been making money through sports betting. Right now, I am consistently taking home 20-25k a month from sports betting which is almost four times what the big 4 is paying me. I believe I would be able to make much more than this if I quit, given that 50-60 hours of my week is eaten up by my full time job.
The only issue is that (1) my strategy relatively easily replicable, and (2) It will not work once American sportsbooks smarten up and the lines are priced better. In other words, this is definitely temporary.
If I were to quit my job and do this full time would I have any sort of hope of getting into banking afterwards? How do you think MBAs would view this kind of experience?
Other potentially relevant information:
- Graduated from non-target, 3.6 GPA
- I have about ten clients who's money I manage, in addition to doing this with my own money. I can point to 500k in gains in the past 6 months as of today on my resume.
- I have an interest in banking, and was trying to break in before this blew up. I was actually doing pretty well and went pretty far in interviewing with a few MM banks. I don't think I'll have such luck if I quit (or will I?), so I am considering the opportunity cost as well.
No idea, but I would imagine that most employers would view the "quit steady valuation job to move into full-time gambling" as indicative of a risky person who perhaps exhibits bad judgment. Not saying that what you're doing with gambling is bad -- you actually seem reasonable as you admit that your current edge is probably temporary -- but my guess is that most employers would not view that move as a positive. I believe a lot of people in valuation make the transition to IB... I think if you keep persevering down that route, you have a very good shot at landing an IB role (lot of MM places value a valuation background).
How much are you betting to get those returns?
I placed 150k in bets in January.
SIG (Susquehanna International Group) just created a sports betting arm. They provide liquidity to the market while taking advantage of arbitrages across books. Seems pretty cool, and you have their $500b AUM backing you up.
I’ll give my two cents.
First, I don’t think you should quit your job. You are right that eventually these websites will price you out of profitability. I believe that right now they allow this intentionally because having individual users who are consistently profitable and then are outspoken about it (like you coming here and telling us you are making 25k a month) is great marketing. It sells sports betting as a legitimate endeavor that is ‘cool’ for a person to spend hours on. It’s very similar to how trading gurus will post about one of their ‘students’ making a great trade and making 100k in one hour.
But once the industry growth normalizes the next only way to increase profitability is with better pricing and that’s when you stop existing. This could be in 6 months or could be in two years. You are right to take advantage of it but I would not destroy my career for it.
If I were you what I’d do instead is look for an easier job. I know of people who are independently wealthy who have arrangements where they don’t even work some days of the week, and are not expected to be on the usual 9-5 pm. They are just in charge of managing some projects and other than that they focus on their other stuff. You can find someone who will accommodate this arrangement for you. But continue working. Because as much as betting websites want it to, betting will never be seen as prestigious. So barely any firm will value what you are doing here in terms of giving you a job once it dies down.
This is really good advice. Any input on where to look/what types of roles would be more likely to accommodate an arrangement like this?
I see many of these positions in big companies all across the spectrum but the one common denominator is that these people are already very trusted by management. They trust that you will pull through even if you are only working 20 hours a week. So of course first you should poke around your network.
Beyond that, no company will advertise in a public posting that a position only requires 20 hours a week. The next best thing that you should do is look around for a 100% WFH Corporate Finance job. I have one such job and I work 50 hour weeks. But within those 50 hours I’m a lot of the time not that busy. Out of those 50 I’d say 10-20 are spent on me trying to be excellent so I do more than I technically have to. So if someone were to have my job but not really care about being top bucket, they could work 30 hour weeks. And if you mix it with WFH then you can be online all day but really working in your betting business when you don’t have any urgent work to complete.
WFH is really a blessing for side-hustles. Once I stop caring about my job I’ll probably start one too.
If you're able to code or just run fundamental analysis part time, send me a PM.
Question: you are saying arbitrage... like you are getting risk free profits? Taking advantage of the same game with different lines on different books?
Or are you more of a sharpe? Making the majority of your winnings from winning a 50%+ on your bets?
If it is the first, I agree, these gaps will close as sports gambling gets more popular but right now...I've seen it as well, same game with lines 3+ points apart on different books. Grab each side and its risk free money if the result is in the spread. Does this sound correct?
If you are a sharpe, then maybe you have a career in this. Hard to win 60%+ like some of these guys do but it happens.
I don't know where you live, but if its the US, managing other peoples money in a sports betting capacity is likely gray area legal at best. Sports betting laws are crazy complicated and evolving rapidly right now. If you're going to bank on this as a resume builder, make sure you're on the right side of the law.
If you’re doing arbitrage, don’t books see this? I’m pretty sure all of the big ones communicate with each other and if they see people taking advantage of slightly different lines then they come in to stop it eventually. Could be wrong though, just don’t see the books allowing someone to guarantee profit off of them
Do you sell picks? Would be interested in purchasing your max plays, lmk!
I’ll pay for All your picks boss
The best way to check the honesty of a casino is to win a large sum and check if you get your money without any problems. If you don’t want to risk your money, you should look at the reviews about this casino on the Internet.
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