When Plans go Astray – My year of Sport Travel and Life Updates

You can do all the planning in the world. But life usually gets in the way.

Let’s start with the amazing news. After many years of trial and error, we are expecting kid number 2 later this year. Getting and staying pregnant is not as easy as we thought it would be after having our first kid. Only 75% of pregnancies end with a baby, and as you are all punters, you know that a 25% chance happens 1 in 4 times.

Now some sad news. One of my parents has not been well the past few years and we just don’t know how much longer we get to spend quality time with them. But that does mean we have been given the opportunity to know there is only a limited amount of time and this amazing article called The Tail End explains in simple graphs how much time we all really have.

It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end.

The Plan

I created this site almost exactly 9 years ago, and in the About section I put this

The end goal is to make enough per year to make this a full-time job and then travel the world while placing the bets. I will be using a credit card with frequent flyer points to try and receive at least 500,000 FF miles per year.

I’m a strange guy (that’s putting it mildly). I see things in 10 year periods. When I started this adventure, I knew I would dedicate 10 years to learning everything I could about betting and trying to make a profit from it. I had no idea if I would have made a profit, but I knew I would have learnt a lot and figured out some way to make it pay. Patience is one of my superhero abilities. It’s something very few people have in the era of Instagram and consumer culture.

Over the past 9 years, I have put away $10,000 each year into my travel fund. I had a bold plan to celebrate my 40th birthday and hopefully the success of my betting by going on the biggest sporting trip anyone in the world had ever dreamed. I was going to call it my “Year of Sports Travel“. To top it off, I was going to bring you all along with me by becoming a YouTuber and vlogging my entire year. For an introvert with a face for radio and a voice best suited to mime, this was going to take me way out of my comfort zone.

At the start of this year, we began planning the trip. I had earned enough frequent flyer points to fly the family business class round the world. The $100,000 was to be spent on going to all the major sporting events, eating all the worlds amazing foods and seeing everything this magical world has to offer.

We planned to World school kid #1 (instead of sending him to kindergarten), and I would automate most of my current work and betting.

I also thought it would be an amazing marketing tool for Punt101 (my new business) and Dailyprofit. I also had dreams of building up an audience on Youtube and becoming an “influencer” (Spew) in the sports travel space. I’d get free trips from Sports Travel companies and Bookmakers would want to advertise on the Vlogs.

The Year of Sports Travel

One of the fun ideas was to work with tipsters and votes from twitter followers and bet on each event I attended. My wife (who has zero idea about betting) would also take me on and whoever won the bet that week would get to choose the activity we did in the next location.

Here was what I had planned earlier in the year.

Note: All this sport was also mixed with seeing every zoo in the world (kid #1) and seeing the world and other great activities (wife)

January: Australia

• Australian Open
• A-League game
• NBL game

February: America

• Superbowl
• NBA All Star game
• NHL game
• Daytona

March: America

• Indian Wells (Tennis)
• Miami Open (Tennis)
• Players Championship (Golf)
• NCAA Basketball
• NBA games
• MLB opening day

April: America and London

• NHL games
• NBA games
• Boston Maraton
• London Marathon

May: America and Europe

• Kentucky Derby (Horse racing)
• FA Cup Final
• French Open
• Monaco GP
• Europa League Final
• Champions League Final
• EPL Game
• Seria A Game

June: Europe

• French Open Final
• Euro 2020 (all over Europe)
• Budapest RedBull Race
• Calcio Storico (Fighting Soccer)

July: Europe and Japan

• Wimbledon
• Ascot (Horse racing)
• Euro2020 Final
• Palio di Siena (Horse racing)
• Tour de France
• Tokyo Olympics

August: Japan

• Olympics
• Japanese Baseball

September: Australia

• AFL Grand Final
• NRL Grand Final

October, November & December: Australia

• ICC World T20 (Cricket)
• Melbourne Cup
• Spring racing festival
• A-League games
• NBL

I still had to add a lot more events and would also like to see quirky sports along the way as well.

Tell me that would not be the most amazing year of travel and sport.

Sadly, it’s on hold

Honestly, it would have been an incredible year. But it won’t be happening and I am not upset about it. I’d happily trade in that year for what I get instead. A new kid and time with my parents.

It will also give me time to work on my youtube presence and get me (and the wife) used to speaking in front of the camera. We can also spend the next year and a bit learning video and photography skills and it gives me more time to get Punt101 humming along.

For now, you can follow my youtube channel where I will be sharing what I have learnt from betting over the past 9 years.

I’ll start planning the 2021 year of sports travel, but it is more likely we will move it to 2022.

What’s your dream trip look like?

Let me know what your dream year or trip is. I’d also love to hear of any sporting events you think I should add to my list.