Many new bettors struggle with deciding on how to bet on sports. It’s an especially intimidating undertaking for bettors without a background in statistics. However, it doesn’t take a stats genius to learn and enjoy sports betting. Bettors just need to understand probabilities to get started. This Sports Betting 101 Guide will help you get started.
Bovada allows sports betting online on their user-friendly mobile interface or in their state of the art poker and casino gaming rooms. The minimum wager online is $1 and $50 for mobile bets. Making money betting on sports can be tough, but there are a lot of sports bettors who consistently win, and there are even a lot of professional bettors who make a good living off of sports betting. On this page you will find sports betting strategy and tips to help you become one of the winning bettors.
Beginner’s Guide To Sports Betting
Anyone asking themselves, “How does sports betting work?” has come to the right place. Our beginner’s guide will help bettors:
- Understand what they’re looking at when they open a sportsbook
- Create basic strategies to manage their bankrolls
- Find the best sportsbook – or sportsbooks – to create accounts for
While Gaming Today can’t reveal every winning wager, we can give bettors the tools to do it themselves. The best sports betting sites include:
- PointsBet
If any of these sports betting sites are available, they’re solid choices for newbies. We have reviews for each of these top sports betting apps on Gaming Today.
Most Common Types Of Sports Bets
Bettors will find these core bets at every sportsbook:
- Straight bets
- Futures bets
- Prop bets
- Parlay bets
Since these bets are everywhere, understanding them is critical to becoming a successful sports bettor.
Straight Bets
Straight bets are the foundational basics of sports betting. They’re single bets on single games. These include:
- Moneylines
- Point spreads
- Point totals
For example, if a bettor wanted to wager on the Patriots beating the Titans, they could place a moneyline wager on the Patriots. It’s one bet on one outcome. No matter how any other bets turn out, the Patriots wager would win or lose on its own terms.
Futures Bets
Futures bets are high-risk high-reward wagers on a season’s outcome. That includes everything from Championship winners to award winners. A wager on the Packers winning the Super Bowl would be a futures bet. So would a wager on Aaron Rogers winning an MVP award at the end of the NFL season. The odds of betting correctly is challenging, even for sophisticated statistical models. But the rewards are massive for bettors who wager correctly. So, high-risk bettors with strong opinions may be drawn to these.
Prop Bets
Prop bets are also called fun bets. They’re wagers that have nothing to do with a game’s outcome. They’re on random events during the game. They could include everything from the first team to score a set number of touchdowns to the length of the high note at the end of the National Anthem. They’re fun random wagers, and are good for parties.
Betting On Sports Information
Parlay Bets
Parlay bets are a string of bets that all have to come true for the bet to win. So, bettors could create a parlay bet that wagers the Broncos and Notre Dame will both win their games. In a parlay bet, both wagers have to win for the parlay to win. There’s no partial credit. It’s risky, but it boosts the odds and increases payouts.
10 Common Question About How Sports Betting Works
Many bettors have similar questions at the beginning. Here are the top ten.
What Is A Point Spread?
Point spreads are the number of points a team has to win or lose by. Here’s what they mean:
- -2.5 means the favorite to win has to win by at least three points.
- +2.5 means the underdog has to lose by less than three points.
That gives bettors who wager on their favorite teams the same chance to win bets as bettors who wager on the best teams.
Any betting guide worth its salt can answer that.
What Is A Moneyline Bet?
Moneyline bets are the most basic of sports betting basics. It’s a bet on who will win the game. Here’s an example from an NBA’s live bet:
- Milwaukee Bucks: -530
- Orlando Magic: +380
These are the odds from the third quarter, so bettors have a lot of game information to work with. Anyone confident the Bucks would carry the game could wager on the Bucks to win. But anyone confident in a comeback from the Orlando Magic could bet on them to win.
What Is A Favorite And What Is An Underdog?
A favorite is the team expected to win the game. The underdog is the team expected to lose. Favorites are marked with a negative sign, and underdogs are marked with a positive sign. Those signs tell bettors how risky their wagers are. The lower the negative odds, the higher the chances the favorite will win. The higher the positive odds, the lower the chances the underdog will win.
What Does Over/Under Mean?
Over/Unders refer to point total bets. Bettors who wager over the point total are betting that the two teams will score more combined points than the sportsbook says. Unders wager that fewer the teams will score fewer combined points than the sportsbook says. For example, a sportsbook might offer something like this:
- St. Louis Blues: O 5.5
- Colorado Avalanche: U 5.5
Either the Blues have to score six or more goals, or the Avalanche has to score five or fewer goals.
What Does -125 Mean?
-125 tells bettors a few things. First, these are odds on the favorite. Whichever team this is is predicted to win – in this case, 55.6%. (Online odds calculators can convert sportsbook odds to probabilities.) These odds also mean that bettors have to wager $125 to win $100. Since this team is more likely to win, sportsbooks aren’t going to pay more out than they accept. Bettors may profit individually, but underdog wagers and house advantages are going to keep sportsbook profits up.
Where Can I Place A Bet?
Since placing bets is integral to sports betting, bettors should know how to find sportsbooks. Many states list licensed sportsbook operators either on the Department of Revenue website or the Lottery Division website. (It depends who runs sportsbooks in that state.) Bettors can also search for sportsbooks at casinos or find sportsbook websites and apps in states that allow online wagering.
The list of states with legal online sports betting is growing by the year. Currently, almost two dozen states have legal online sportsbooks or are in the process of launching sports betting. Some of the most popular states where sports betting is legal include Michigan, Colorado, and Illinois.
What Is Live Betting?
Betting on sports games is one thing, but betting during them can be exhilarating. Live betting allows bettors to make wagers during a game. Sometimes, teams will have a rough start, but bring it together in the end. Other teams have a great start then finish poorly. (Broncos anyone?)
Live betting lets bettors take advantage of these changing odds. It tests a bettor’s ability to guess how the game will change during play. It’s a fresh challenge for bettors who pick the basics up quickly.
How Much Should I Bet?
No more than you’re willing to lose. Learn how to bet on sports one at a time, first. Then you can make a few wagers at a time. Eventually, bettors will be able to put several wagers on one bankroll. Professional bettors know how to distribute their bets so they can balance wins against losses. They begin to run their bet slips like sportsbooks run books.
10 Top Sports Betting Sites
And it all starts from learning how to make one bet at a time.
What Sports Betting App Offers The Best Odds?
It depends. Some sportsbooks offer strong odds on the favorite, the underdog, certain sports, or offer so many boosts and promotions that they beat the competition. Here are some common trends:
- DraftKings: Competitive odds on favorites
- FanDuel: Competitive odds on underdogs
- FOX Bet: Bet boosts that can improve odds over other sportsbooks
- SBK: Competitive odds, overall
No sportsbook will have the best odds every time. The best way to bet on sports is to understand your own preferences, then find a sportsbook that matches them.
What Are The Most Common Betting Mistakes
Betting on your favorite team instead of the best team is the best way to burn through your money. If you keep losing wagers, don’t keep trying to make the same strategy work. Chasing losses doesn’t work in Vegas, and it doesn’t work on DraftKings. Failing to learn and adjust will hurt new bettors more than most things they can do. (It’s as true on the field as it is off the field.)
Understanding sports betting means understanding that feelings can’t be part of your wagers. Deliberate strategies beat feelings over the lifetime of a sportsbook account.
Sports Betting 101 FAQs
Pick a sportsbook. Bettors don’t have to know the ins and outs of sportsbooks to start betting. They just have to choose a licensed brand, create an account, and start betting. Bettors shouldn’t deposit more than they’re willing to lose, though. Responsible gaming is important. They should also take welcome bonuses into account when they’re making their first deposits and wagers.
Some states allow them. Sports betting has spread across the United States, but not every state has implemented it the same way. Some sportsbooks only allow retail sports betting. Others have online and mobile sports betting. Bettors can check their states’ laws to see whether mobile betting is on the table for them.
Here are the states that legalized online sports betting and whose online sports betting industries are live:
- Michigan
- Virginia
- Nevada
- Colorado
- Iowa
- Illinois
- Indiana
- West Virginia
- Pennsylvania
- New Jersey
- New Hampshire
Reliable payouts, site security, and state regulation. In Colorado, licensed sportsbooks are required to keep enough cash on hand to pay bettors. Most states require security audits before sportsbooks go live so social security numbers aren’t stolen en mass. Finally, state governments can twist sportsbooks’ arms into operating legitimately. The risks of abandoning these protections aren’t worth the potential rewards of using illegal sportsbooks.
Are the “better” odds associated with illegal sportsbooks aren’t worth your social security number?
Yes. Licensed sportsbook sites are audited by either state or independent authorities to ensure player data is safe. The most common security measure is end-to-end encryption. That means a hacker can’t even see what bettors are typing into their screens. It’s the kind of security bettors should expect in an industry handling such sensitive information.
In most states, 21. However, three states with legalized (but not necessarily live and operational) sports betting allow 18-year-olds to gamble:
- Washington
- Montana
- Rhode Island
Each of these states probably has a fascinating history that explains why it lets 18-year-olds gamble. But in the meantime, all we can say is not to blow all your college money at a sportsbook.
Earlier this month, FuboTV became the latest media company to throw its hat into the sports betting ring.
The sports streaming service acquired Vigtory Sportsbook for an undisclosed sum and plans to launch a sportsbook later this year.
Fubo stock is up some 35% since the deal, suggesting investors are enamored with the sports betting story. But should they be?
FuboTV passing up advertising money
The company is, without doubt, taking a huge risk.
Betting On Sports
FuboTV could easily sit back and do lucrative marketing deals with existing operators like FanDuel and DraftKings. In fact the company did an exclusive deal with FanDuel back in 2019 that included media buying. But it seems unlikely FanDuel would keep spending money with Fubo as it becomes a direct competitor.
Instead, Fubo faces the huge lift involved with running its own sportsbook. That means getting licenses and market access in every state rather than letting someone else do it and taking their ad dollars.
That’s a lengthy and costly process. There’s a reason why companies like ESPN are sticking to advertising deals rather than launching a sportsbook.
And remember: Vigtory currently has access only in Iowa and has not yet taken a single bet. As previously discussed, it is not enough for a media company to have sports-mad viewers. It still needs a world-class betting product or that audience will simply bet elsewhere.
Warning sign?
One potential comparison here is TheScore, which also forwent easy ad money to launch its own book. To date, the company has faced something of an uphill battle.
It posted a $9.3 million EBITDA loss for the last three months of 2020, thanks largely to the cost of setting up gaming operations. It has also posted a negative net gaming revenue for five consecutive quarters.
And that’s despite the betting app itself ranking sixth out of 16 sportsbook apps in NJ, according to an Eilers & Krejcik review. In other words, it’s not enough to have an engaged audience and a good app.
You also need expertise in everything else that goes into running a sportsbook, like digital marketing, CRM and trading. And even if you do all that well, you need deep pockets to fund several years of losses. Market leader FanDuel expects to lose around $200 million in EBITDA in 2020, despite revenues that could near $1 billion.
Sports betting is a hot sector
So why did Fubo take the risk? The answer is possibly in the upside.
For starters, the stock is up significantly from the time of the announcement (although highly volatile.) That’s around $700 million in value added for an acquisition that cost a fractions of that.
If nothing else, it puts Fubo in the sports betting category of the market, where optimism – and multiples – are running high. It also buys management time as they try to tackle negative profit margins.
“The valuations around sports betting operators are so huge, why not take a punt on being one?” said Andy Clerkson, an advisor for Fox Bet and partner at gambling PR firm Red Knot Communications. “You could be a super-affiliate worth hundreds of millions. Or you could try and be an operator worth billions.”
FuboTV has unique assets
While Fubo may face an uphill battle in competing with the FanDuels of the world, it does have some advantages.
“Owning the entire ecosystem is extremely valuable,” Clerkson said. “Having a single sign-in for streaming and betting, then having the data analytics on all those players for offering bets, that could be very powerful.”
Whether that’s feasible is another matter. TheScore for example has a separate app for gambling so its live scores app does not need to go through regulator testing. You can make that journey as seamless as possible, but its still a journey.
Indeed, the act of added betting into an existing stream is also more complex than it looks on first blush. Most rights holders currently charge separately for the betting streams that go to operators. As a result it seems Fubo would have to cough up for an entirely new set of streams if it wanted to offer betting on them
Its understood some of the biggest operators in Europe spend up to $15 million a year on streaming fees annually. That’s a big new a cost for Fubo.
What could be next
Betting On Sports App
So theer;s details to be figured out. But the optimism around US sports betting isn’t disappearing any time soon. Big markets like Virginiaand Michiganare online. And there’s movement in places like Texasand New York in 2021 too.
“This industry has a lot of growth ahead of it,” Clerkson said. “So why not take a risk now?”
Fubo’s sports betting plan is perhaps best described as a future for next year’s Super Bowl: the odds of hitting might be relatively small, but the payoff could be massive.
Either way, we won’t find out the result for a good while yet.