Every time that you vote on any post you are "betting" that the post will do well and earn you curation rewards.
This is a gambling bet, unlike the voting games. In the vote games you are not required to gamble. Your bet is free and you are rewarded whether you were the first to bet or the last. Even if you lose the bet you still get curation reward. There is no gamble.
The difference with curation is you have a limited number of votes before your curation becomes diluted. This means you are gambling when you bet on whether a post will do well or not. Only the people who were the first to upvote (taking 30 minute donation period into account) win the bet.
A game that allows you to pile on and win at any time undermines the system built for us to create a decentralised social media platform.
a handful of actors can determine what goes on the trending page...wasn't that something that steemsports was trying to address?
Have they addressed that? No! They just put themselves on the trending page. They have done nothing to diversify authors who are trending at all.
If whales were not backing up Steemsports with votes would we be having this discussion?
No, we would instead be discussing whatever positive things they chose to supports or probably the next problem in line. If it weren't for the whale support this would not be a problem.
Congrats on your 43c. Notice that one comment made more than a steemsports payout ever gave you!
In a strict sense if you are not risking your own money I would not define it as gambling.
Actually the most I have made from a single post was 9.5 Steem. Normally I make about 100x or more than the amount I get from curation. Curation gives me about 0.001 to 0.007 steem per post. I haven't done the exact math but it's around that.
You can say it's pennies but it adds up overtime.