If you want to bet on football, then you have plenty of options.
There are not only lots of games you can bet on, there are also
lots of different types of wagers you can place. Point spreads
and totals are the most popular types, by quite a distance, and
many football bettors stick solely to those. This isn’t really the
ideal approach, as some of the other wagers can be very useful
in the right circumstances.

What sports offer moneyline betting? Baseball, soccer, and ice hockey are mostly moneyline betting, since these sports do not have point spreads moneylines are the default way of wagering. Football and basketball do have moneylines in addition to point spreads. In recent years, football moneylines have become extremely popular among sports bettors. Moneyline bets present the most straightforward way to wager on a sports contest. A moneyline wager simply asks the bettor to choose which team will win a game, with no point spread involved.

The moneyline is definitely one of those wagers. This is often viewed as an
alternative to the point spread, and in some respects it is, but
that doesn’t mean it should be ignored just because you like betting on the spread. We explain why in this
article, and we also offer some tips for betting football moneylines.

First, though, we’ll explain exactly how moneylines work when betting on football. You can watch this video we have put together or read on for even more information down the page.

How Football Moneylines Work

Betting the moneyline for a football game is simply betting on which team you think is going to win. There is no point spread involved. Whichever team you select has to win outright for a wager to be successful. In the unlikely event of a tie, your stake will be returned.

In most football games there is a favorite and an underdog. Very occasionally there are games where the two team are completely evenly matched, but for the most part one team is favored over the other to win. With point spreads, the idea is to create an even money proposition when betting on the game. So the favorite has to win by at least a certain number of points for a wager on them to be successful, and the underdog has to lose by no more than a certain number of points for a wager on them to be successful. The bigger the gap in quality between the two teams, the bigger the point spread.

Because there’s no point spread involved with moneyline wagers, the odds are adjusted to reflect this. So whereas both sides of a point spread wager both have the same odds, or very close to the same (typically around -110), moneyline odds can be very different. Here’s an example.

For this game, the Cardinals are the clear favorites. The bookmakers consider them very likely to win the game, so the odds are quite low. By contrast, the odds for the Packers are quite high because they’re not considered very likely to win. Here’s how the potential payouts look for the two wagers.

As you can see, you stand to make a much better return when backing the Packers. This is because the risks are higher, due to their chances of winning. The Cardinals are far more likely to win than lose, so a wager on them doesn’t offer a great return.

This highlights a notable advantage of the moneyline wager. You get to control, to some extent, the risk versus reward. For example, you might be quite certain that the Cardinals are going to win this game, but not convinced that they’re going to cover the spread. So a moneyline wager is the safe option. There’s less money to be made, but less chance of losing. On the other hand, you might think that the Packers are going to cause an upset. Rather than betting on them to cover the spread, you can bet on them to win outright. There’s less chance of winning such a wager, but the potential returns are much greater.

We mentioned earlier how point spreads change depending on the gap in quality between the two teams. The same principle applies to moneylines, but it’s the odds that change. So, for example, if two teams are fairly evenly matched then the following odds might be available.

The potential payout for a bet on the underdog here is lower than in the previous match, because they have a better chance of winning. The potential payout for a bet on the favorite is higher because they’re not AS likely to win.

When to Bet Moneylines

We’re often asked a question along the lines of “why would I place moneyline wagers rather than point spread wagers?” There’s no simple answer to this question really, as point spreads and moneylines shouldn’t be viewed as “either/or” options as such. You don’t have to decide that you’re always going to bet on the spread, or that you’re always going to bet moneylines. These are two different wager types that have their own merits, and any bettor should have them both in their arsenal.

We’ve already mentioned how moneyline wagers give you more control over the risk versus reward element of betting. There are also other reasons why you might choose this type of wager over a points spread. If you fully understand how both of these wagers work, you’ll find that there are games when a moneyline wager is the right option, and games when the point spread wager is the right option. There are no definitive rules about which one you should use and when, only a general principle that you should try to follow.

This should hopefully make perfect sense to you. Successful betting, on any sport, is all about finding value, so you should always look to get the best value that you can. If a moneyline wager offers the best value on a football game, then that’s the wager you should be placing. If a point spread seems the best option, then go down that route. There may even be occasions where it’s viable to place both wagers on the same game.

With all that being said, there is one situation where we’d suggest the moneyline wager is usually a better option than a point spread wager. This is when you like three point underdogs in an NFL game. Only a small percentage of NFL games are decided by three points or less, so if you think a three point underdog is going to cover then you might as well bet on them to win outright. This will generally give you a much better return.

The Seattle versus Carolina game we showed you earlier is a good example of just that kind of situation. Here’s how the point spread looked for that game.

Seattle are three point underdogs, and a bet on them to cover is available at odds of -110. If you liked that bet, it would actually be much more logical to place a moneyline wager at odds of +130. Let’s look at the potential returns for the two bets.

This is a huge difference. The potential profit on the moneyline wager ($143) is over 40% greater than that of the point spread wager ($100). You’re a little less likely to win, as there is a chance that Seattle would lose by one or two points, but there’s a more than fair chance that if they did cover they would actually win the match. And, of course, if they lost by three or more then you’d have lost either way.

Tips for Betting Football Moneylines

Now that you know how moneylines work, and have some idea of when to use them, you can start to consider how to bet moneylines effectively. The following tips will help you with this.

Work on Your Handicapping Skills

As with any type of football wager, your best hope of making money lies in being able to handicap games effectively. This means analyzing each team’s relative chances of winning, and then comparing those chances to the odds available. That’s a slightly simplified explanation of how handicapping works, but it’s accurate nonetheless.

Actually handicapping games is far from simple though. Or, at least, handicapping them well is. There are all kinds of different factors that can affect the outcome of a game, and you need to take as many of them as possible into account. You also need to assess just how much of an impact those factors will have, and try to accurately evaluate just how likely a team is to win. For more advice on how to do this, please see the following article.

Picks Your Spots

One of the biggest mistakes that bettors make is trying to make a judgement on every single game that’s taking place. This is especially true of those who only focus on the NFL. There aren’t that many games each week, and bettors think they stand the best chance of making money if they can predict the outcomes in all of them. This is not an approach we recommend.

The key to successful betting lies in quality and not quantity. Your overall chances of winning are much greater if you pick your spots carefully, and only bet when you find real value. There isn’t a huge number of NFL games each week, but there’s enough that it’s simply not realistic to think you can handicap them all. And if you’re also betting on college games then this is even more of an issue.

Be patient, be selective, and only bet when you have justified reasons to do so.

Get the Best Odds

This tip applies to placing wager of any type, on any sport. It’s important enough for us to mention it here though. If you only bet with one bookmaker or betting site, then you’re almost certainly hindering your chances of making money. At the very least you will be missing out on getting the best possible value.

This is because different bookmakers and betting sites price up games differently. So the odds they offer are not always the same. Remember the Packers versus Cardinals game we showed earlier as an example? We used the actual odds from a real betting site for that example. The following odds were also available for the same game, from various other sites.

• Packers +252 / Cardinals -285
• Packers +260 / Cardinals -290
• Packers +240 / Cardinals -270
• Packers +245 / Cardinals -280

As you can see, there’s not an insignificant difference in what was available. By shopping around for the best odds you can ensure that your potential payout is always as high as it can be. This is a great benefit over time, and can even be the difference between winning overall or losing overall. Such as the fine margins of betting on football.

Moneylines are a viable alternative to point spreads when betting on football. If you’re one of those bettors who only ever bets on the spread, then you could very well be missing out on some good opportunities to find better value. We don’t recommend that you stop placing point spreads and only place moneyline wagers, but you should definitely consider both when betting on a game of football. Try to decide which one offers the better value, and then go with that option.

It’s also worth backing big favorites on the moneyline if you like a low risk approach. Always take the odds into consideration though. The profit from winning a lot of bets at very low odds can soon be wiped out with just a couple of losing bets.

In sports betting, a moneyline bet is a wager on which team will win a game. Moneylines are the primary wagering option for hockey and baseball, while for basketball and football they are viewed as a secondary alternative to the point spread.

Have you ever heard of moneyline betting? It’s an American term that’s traditionally associated with betting on the major US sports. These wagers are available in other parts of the world too, but they’re typically referred to as win bets. The same principle applies though. When you correctly select which team will win a match, you’ll get paid out at the relevant odds.

We explain how moneyline betting works in a little more detail below. There’s no need to feel overwhelmed, since they’re relatively straightforward. As a result, the strategies for betting moneylines are also rather straightforward. Nonetheless, we provide some useful advice for how to use them effectively.

Moneylines Explained

For the most part, moneylines are used when there are two possible outcomes. For example, if you’re placing a moneyline wager on a basketball game, then you’ll essentially be betting on which of the two competing teams will win. Your two choices will be to either back the favorite or to back the underdog.

For example, let’s say there’s an upcoming basketball game between the Boston Celtics and the Memphis Grizzlies. A bookmaker might offer the following point spread on the game.

If you understand point spread betting, then it will be obvious that the Celtics are the favorites here. For the purposes of a point spread bet, the bookmaker would remove 5.5 points from their total at the end of the game. If you chose to back them, you’d need them to win by six points or more in order to win your point spread wager.

The Grizzlies, on the other hand, are the underdogs. For the purposes of the point spread bet, the bookmaker would add 5.5 points to their total at the end of the game. If you chose to back them, you’d need them to win or lose by less than six points.

The point spread is basically used to create a 50/50 betting proposition. In this example, the Celtics are theoretically just as likely to win by six points or more as the Grizzlies are to lose by less than six points. This is reflected in the odds, which are typically -110 on both sides of the wager. You have to risk $110 for the chance of winning $100.

If a bookmaker offers moneyline betting on the same game, then their market might look similar to this one.

The bets here are no longer a 50/50 proposition. A bet on the Celtics means you have to risk $240 for the chance of winning $100. The odds are lower because you only need the Celtics to win. Since it doesn’t matter how many points they win by, the chances of this happening are obviously higher.

A bet on the Grizzlies means potentially winning $210 for every $100 staked, which is obviously a better return on your money. However, the Grizzlies would need to win the game outright for such a wager to be successful. The chances of this happening are pretty low.

With a negative moneyline, the odds show how much stake is needed to win $100. With a positive moneyline, the odds show how much a $100 stake will pay in winnings. When betting in non-$100 increments, you’ll have to do all of these calculations on your own.

Calculating Moneyline Payouts

We’ve written a whole article on how to calculate moneyline payouts. Anyone interested in learning more about all the formulas and configurations involved should definitely check this article out. Otherwise, you could just follow this quick trick.

When betting on the favorite, simply divide the negative moneyline by 100 to get a decimal. If you were planning to bet on the Celtics in the above example, this would give you 2.40 (ignore the negative). Now all you have to do is divide your stake by that number in order to see what your potential payouts would be. Let’s say you wanted to stake $650. When you divide that number by 2.40, you’d see that your potential payout is $270.83.

When betting on the underdog, the first step is the same. Divide the positive moneyline by 100, which in the case of the Grizzlies in the above example would give you 2.10. Then, multiply your stake by that number to get your potential winnings. $450 multiplied by 2.10 is $945. Essentially, this means if you risked $450 on the Grizzlies, you would stand to win $945.

Finding Value in Moneylines

All moneylines have what is referred to as an implied probability. This is really just a fancy term pertaining to how often a wager needs to win in order to breakeven, but it’s something you need to understand in order to make a profit from betting moneylines.

Calculating implied probability is relatively straightforward, as long as you use the following formula.

Risk is the initial amount staked on a wager, while return is the initial amount staked plus the potential win.

Let’s use this formula to calculate the implied probability of the Celtics winning their game against the Grizzlies. We know the odds are -240, which means we’d have to risk $240 for a total potential return of $340 (the initial stake plus the $100 winnings). So the calculation here is $240 divided by $340. This gives us an implied probability of 0.7059.

Technically, probability should always be a number between 0 and 1. It’s often expressed as a percentage though, which makes things easier for the purposes of betting. 0.7059 converted into a percentage (i.e. multiplied by 100) gives us 70.59%. What this means is that the odds suggest the Celtics have a 70.59% chance of winning. If we believe the Celtics have an even greater chance of winning, then we should back them at odds of -240.

This is basically what finding value is all about. When we think that a wager is more likely to win than the odds suggest, we should place that wager. As long as we’re estimating those chances accurately, we should have no problem making an overall profit.

It’s important to note that finding value isn’t necessarily about betting on what we think will happen. If we applied the above calculations to the Grizzlies at odds of +210, we’d get an implied probability of 32.36%. Backing them would be a wise decision if we believe their chances of winning are higher than 32.36%.

After conducting some research, we gave them a 40% chance of winning. Even though this means we actually think their chances of losing are higher than their chances of winning, we should still back them. We’d be placing a wager with positive expected value, which should be everyone’s goal when betting on sports.

Removing Vig & Shopping Moneylines

What Does The Money Line Mean In Betting Football

Earlier, we explained how the implied probability of -240 is 70.59% and how the implied probability of +210 is 32.36%. Notice these two probabilities total 102.95%. The extra 2.95% is the bookmaker’s advantage. It’s called vig, and it’s basically a commission that they charge customers for placing wagers. By removing the vig, you can see what the fair odds on the game would be.

If the odds are the Celtics at -240 and the Grizzlies +210, what is the fair price without vig? Many assume that because there’s a 30 cents gap between the two lines, we just deduct 15 cents from the favorite and add 15 cents to the underdog. This would give us a fair price of -225 for the Celtics and +225 for Grizzlies, which is incorrect.

To remove vig correctly, we need to divide the total of the two implied probabilities by each individual probability. So, in this case, we need to do the following calculations.

70.59% / 102.95% = 68.57%

32.36% / 102.95% = 31.43%

The two results above are the no-vig probabilities. If you’re sharp, you’ll notice that adding 68.57% and 31.43% up together will give you 100%. The extra 2.95% has been removed, so there’s no more vig. We can now go to our odds converter and enter 68.57% into the implied probability field. This will give us moneyline odds of -218. If we enter 31.43%, we’ll get moneyline odds of +218. The original moneyline market of the Celtics at -240 and the Grizzlies at +210 therefore has no-vig odds of the Celtics at -218 and the Grizzlies at +218.

We explain removing vig, and how this process helps us, in more detail in our article on handicapping the market.

Armed with the knowledge of how to remove vig, it’s now possible to prevent yourself from making the same mistakes that the majority of bettors make. Most bettors understand the importance of line shopping (i.e. comparing the lines and odds at different bookmakers and betting sites). However, if they fail to also understand how moneylines and vig work, then they’re probably going to make wagers where they think there’s positive expected value (+EV), even though there’s not.

For example, imagine a game where the odds were -550 for the favorite and +450 for the underdog. A bettor shopping around for lines might be delighted to see the same favorite offered at -490 and enthusiastically back the team at those odds simply because those are the best odds available. However, if we removed the vig from -550 and +450, we’d see that the fair odds are actually -466 and +466. So, placing a wager at odds of -490 doesn’t actually offer any value.

For reasons hinted at, when shopping odds for what’s expected to be a lopsided game, you need to find significantly better odds on the favorite’s moneyline than on the underdog’s moneyline. This is the only way to make the bet +EV.

Value only exists when the odds are better than the fair price, or when you are confident that a wager has a greater chance of winning than the odds suggest. By simply knowing this information, you become more knowledgeable than most recreational bettors who bet moneylines without really knowing how they work.

What Is Moneyline

Moneyline Bonus Strategy

When it comes to sports betting, sites usually offer one of these two bonuses: cash or free plays. When the bonus is cash, there’s no unique strategy outside of the usual sound handicapping required to gain an edge. When the bonus is free plays, however, some additional strategy comes into play.

Please read our article on sports betting bonuses and rewards for more information on how these work.

Money Line Definition

If you wager $100 cash on odds of +100, you are staking $100 cash to win $100 cash. Your total potential return is $200, which is your initial stake plus your winnings. If you wager $100 free play on +100, however, your total potential return is just the $100 winnings. Whether you win or lose, your free play is used up. Obviously, free play bonuses aren’t worth as much as cash bonuses, so that means it’s up to you to squeeze as much value out of them as possible.

One the best ways to do this is to hedge by using moneyline betting at multiple sites. Let’s use the previous example of the game between the Celtics and the Grizzlies to illustrate how this works.

What Is The Moneyline In Football Betting Saturday

At a site that offers a free play bonus, you’d bet $100 free play on the Grizzlies at +210. At another site, where you have a cash balance, you bet $150 cash on the Celtics at -240. If the Grizzlies won, you’d win $210 cash from your free play but lose your $150 cash. That’s a profit of $60. If the Celtics won, you’d win $62.51 from your cash bet and lose only your free play credit. That’s a profit of $62.51

Money Line In Sports Betting

Feel free to play around with exactly how much to bet per wager. We just wanted to show you that making a guaranteed profit is doable. Since it’s possible to claim bonuses at a number of different sites as a new customer, and since many sites offer a reload bonus, this strategy is repeatable. The most important thing to remember is this; only bet with reputable sites, like any of the ones we recommend.