> Is it because sports betting gives you quick feedback as oppose to lotteries making you wait or maybe the ease it is to drop your whole bank account as a bet?

I suspect it's because unlike the lotto and games of chance, people can delude themselves into thinking they "know" the sport. It's not a gambling if they know better. It's also easy to externalize the blame for your loses "they would have won if not for <bad call, bad play, bad management, injury, weather, etc... Or combination thereof>"

You can dip your toe in betting on the obvious mismatched, where it's pretty clear who will win. This is priced into the bookmaking, so the payout is little, but this helps people convince themselves they do know the sport and chase longer odds with better payouts.

And then you get sunk cost fallacy, as they lose, they convince themselves they can win it back because they learned from before and their system will work this time.