The mistake is to think that gambling is a sure thing to pursue as a money maker. I don't know how much more money he has to sacrifice just to raise capital and then start a business in another field.
The most sensible solution is to find a number of investors to finance your friend's business, but there must be a portfolio of businesses that he has successfully run so that investors will be happy to help him.
Hopefully that way your friend can develop better, and the most important thing is to stop gambling using money and important assets.
That's not how they see it, the real mistake is from the fact that they're seeing gambling as a way to multiply their money and that they don't see anything wrong with it despite the inherent risks that are accompanying gambling ever since, I do feel like the reason that people are still considering this kind of thing as a way to make themselves some steady income is because they're too lazy or they just don't like working their bones doing something that actually contributes to the society and to themselves, that's probably a really sad thing if you ask me, they don't like the idea of working for someone but they will gladly lose their money to another individual because they think that they can win money from them and this people still think that the risk is fair when it's not in the first place. To everyone that's considering to do this, make sure that you don't got a family to feed because gambling to make a steady income is a disaster waiting to happen.