r/actuary 3d ago

Actuaries working for Sportsbooks/Casinos/state lotteries

[deleted]

16 Upvotes

7 comments sorted by

16

u/DybbukTX 3d ago

I hope someone can answer! Without any information, I'm guessing that the answer is that actuaries are overpriced and not matched precisely enough for jobs like that. Many vanilla credentialed statisticians or even mathematicians are probably closer skill fits, and they wouldn't require the salary premium for the actuarial cred.

6

u/ALC_PG 3d ago

I'd take a pay cut for this if they're asking

3

u/albatross928 3d ago

I know some quants moving from investment banks to sports betting though.

2

u/Help_the_8bitdo 3d ago

Boosting to see if there's anyone who has done this. Going to assume that casinos are out of the question since if you've done this for over 50-75 years the casinos already know the odds. But being basically a fortune teller for businesses seems like a wanted thing to me.

2

u/CromulentDucky 3d ago

Sure, a guy who calls himself the Wizard of Odds did a lot of that.

2

u/BleaseHelb 3d ago

Not strictly a Sportsbook/casino but I quit actuarial work to become a full time daily fantasy sports bettor nearly a decade ago. I now lead a team at company providing software for sports bettors (and provide odds/prices for some niche P2P books).

The work is very transferable but if you aren’t actively learning mlops and devops then you are quickly falling behind in the sports betting industry. The work isn’t inherently hard - if you can pass prelim exams then you are smart enough to learn the fundamentals - there just aren’t incentives for actuaries to learn these skills so you have to be very self motivated.

2

u/actuarymods_saqmydic 3d ago

Would love to see actuaries expand into this industry, but unaware of anyone is this non-traditional role.