“Investing” in the National Football League

Approximately 10 years ago, I started to apply some of the principles I used with my equity portfolio to National Football League Games. At that time, I was writing for a weekly magazine, OUTREACH, that was marketed by Toronto’s homeless and unemployed. I published a two-part column in the summer of 2013, THE NFL MEETS THE CFA, that gives you a pretty good idea of my approach when it comes to “investing” in the National Football League.

Four NFL seasons ago, I and a partner opened an off-shore betting account. Our return that first season was 88%. This dipped to 22% in Year Two. Except there is no way to prove this performance. But starting in 2017, we started e-mailing out selections in advance and over the past two seasons our documented returns were 36% in 2017 and 39% in 2018. This is in the public domain and can be verified by a bunch of folks.

This year it’s going to be a little bit different. My now-former partner and I will continue to bounce ideas off each other and share research, but our collaboration last year resulted in negative synergy: That is 2 + 2 = 3. Had he made his selections and had I made mine, the returns for BOTH of us would have been significantly higher than 38%. So we will amicably be doing our own things this season, while remaining close friends.

Listen to Michael Hlinka discuss the NFL through his new Podcast!