The only way I can see it 'could' be beneficial is if you purchased a contract some time in the future at a fixed price, and by the time your mining contract begins the value of bitcoin has risen significantly and outweighs the cost of the contract
Nah, that's just gamble as you say. Even if some companies have this product I believe they'll add additional clauses so that they got more profits. Most of them win because the price per share is really high while the bitcoin the user got is small, I doubt they'll change their strategy.
This 'business' is likely going to keep running because it's easy to set up a cloud mining website for $100, and then ask a user to pay $50 for some 'hash power'.