You will always lose if you will not have your experience or interest in any game and you will just follow the tips of others. It is like playing blindly. Betting is an easy game if you know about the sports about which you know like if you know that which player will perform better and how much are their capability then you will bet accordingly and will not lose.
Those who to do sport betting usually have an interest and the fans from particular sports and they know well almost every teams to bets but i think betting game is not easy such as you says even if you have good knowledge for particular teams but sometimes even favourite teams can give unpredictable results to you but indeed the difference if you have at least small knowledge then you can predict by with yourself the results of matches
I am a sports bettor and I learn that we need to be smart by not just betting on the team that we like the most, otherwise we will be bias and most likely we will loss most of the time. The bookmakers are smart enough, sometimes they put a deceiving line that looks too easy and if we bet on it because it's easy but the result is opposite, that's called a trap.