Worst. Bet. Ever.
What you see above appears to be a fun little futures bet offered by the Las Vegas Wynn.
The “yes” side of this thing isn’t truly awful (aside from the obvious part about how the Cubs never win.) You get more than three to one… and three years to get there.
But the “no” side? It stinks.
Consider this:
If you placed $100 on this wager at -400 odds, then after 2.5 years, you’d receive $125.00 if the Cubs didn’t win the World Series during that time.
At the same time, if you invested that $100 in the stock market and assume an average 9.37% return (what the S&P 500 has averaged over the last 10 years), then after 2.5 years, you can expect to see $125.10—regardless of how the Cubs do.
So in other words, even if you had Biff’s sports almanac and were 100 percent certain the Cubs would not win the World Series the next three seasons, you’d still expect to make less money than just investing you wager in the stock market. Now that’s a true sucker bet.
Read the full article at Forbes.com.
Category: Sports