The differences are purely cultural and arbitrary distinctions. These are necessary in some cultures and belief systems.
Not all cultures or individuals require a distinction between investing or gambling for any reason. Whether that is feelings of personal responsibility, religion, or maintaining respect in their community.
Not all cultures or individuals require a distinction between a negative expected value financial game, and a positive expected value financial game. Gambling is typically considered to be negative expected value financial games, whereas "not-gambling" is typically considered to be positive expected value financial games. Sports betting has been argued to fit somewhere on the positive expected value side, purely for regulatory reasons. Typically these arguments become pedantic and semantical as the root of arguing a distinction is for feelings of personal responsibility, religion, maintaining respect in a community, and for regulatory purposes.
In the United States, uniquely, "gambling" is regulated at the state level and ignored by the Federal government except to restrict banking of gambling services using interstate systems (the internet - as such, online gambling services that are not reliant on licensed banking systems have no prohibitions). While the federal government regulates securities and the derivatives of commodities (but not the trading of spot commodities). This causes the fairly arbitrary cognitive dissonance to be put at the forefront. As any one individual can play any money game at the state level and lose it all, but be presented with a paternal limiting relationship in positive expected value games such as daytrading and investing.
In other countries, these can be the same or different regulatory agencies, at the same level of government. Instead of dual overlapping governments.
But ultimately the venn diagram of financial games significantly overlaps such that it is almost a circle.
