Investors "weary" of stocks and bonds will "soon be able to try their luck on a new sports betting fund that hopes to profit by using algorithms to predict the outcome of matches," according to Aime Williams of the FINANCIAL TIMES. The new fund, to be launched this summer by tech start-up Stratagem, "aims to exploit advances in artificial intelligence" to analyze football, basketball and tennis matches using algorithms to place bets before and during games. Stratagem CEO and former Goldman Sachs trader Charles McGarraugh said that the "ultimate goal" was to establish betting on sports "as an asset class." The company "developed technology to map football pitches spatially in real time." McGarraugh said that "sports betting markets were the perfect place to test the company's AI strategies." McGarraugh: "The sports betting market is large, but fragmented, while sporting events are highly structured and repeated." Stratagem hopes to raise £25M ($32.2M) for the fund, which will "initially only be open to wealthy investors." Alternative finance research company AltFi Founder & Dir David Stevenson said, "It's a bonkers idea for investing. I've never seen any evidence that suggests that sports betting outcomes are anything but random" (FT, 5/12).
