How to Bet on NFL Games
NLF the Multi-Billion Dollar Industry
There is no evidence that the creators of football and the NFL did so with sports betting in mind. But if they had tried to create a sport that was perfect for weekly wagering, they couldn’t have done much better than they did.
Baseball is America’s pastime, but football is America’s crazed passion, with its weekly schedule of games, millions of television viewers across the country and the world, and the billion-dollar stadiums that serve as Sunday cathedrals in 32 American cities.
And of course, there is the multi-billion dollar industry of sports gaming, which is only set to grow more significant now that the NFL has become its open and official partner.
NFL Season Structure
What makes NFL betting so appealing is the way the season is laid out. Point spreads and odds are released a whole week before the NFL plays its main bundle of games on Sunday. That’s seven days to dissect the matchup, watch developments at practice and with injuries, and over-analyze who the weather favors.
In the standings, each win and loss is more significant than in other sports, and that’s also the case with NFL bets. There is always another baseball game. The days without football can feel like an eternity.
The NFL is a 17-week schedule played out over 18 weeks, which gives us a total of 272 games to wager during the regular season. We then get 13 more games to wager in the postseason, ending with the biggest day on the sports betting calendar, Super Bowl Sunday.
Types of Single-Game NFL Bets
With 285 individual games on the NFL calendar, betting on a single game is going to be your focus most weeks. But each game comes with several different types of bets to place, and you need to know what they are, how they work, and which bet you would prefer to play.
The most popular type of bet to place is a bet on the point spread. Created in the 1940s by a mathematician who was tired of only betting on odds, a point spread is used to even the playing field between the favorite and the underdog.
So when you bet on the favorite to win the game, that favorite must win by a certain number of points. If you bet on the underdog, the bet can still win even if the team loses, provided they don’t lose by more than the spread.
If the Packers are favored by 5.5 points, a bet on the Packers wins if they win the game by at least six points. If you bet against the Packers and they only win by five points or less, then that bet is also a winner.
A couple of things to note about point spreads. This is not the bookmaker making a prediction on the outcome of the game.
Instead, the bookmaker is trying to get the public to place an equal amount of wagers on both sides of the spread. If betting is slanted to one side over the other, the spread will move in the hopes that the betting will become more equal.
The other thing you’ll notice when betting the point spread is that this type of bet pays -110 on both sides. That means that in order to win $10, you must wager $11.
That extra dollar per $10 wagered is what is known as the vig or juice, and it’s how the bookmaker makes money. It’s also why the book wants betting to be equal on both sides of the line. With 50/50 betting, the vig ensures that the bookmaker will turn a profit no matter which team wins.
Another type of single-game NFL bet that involves a points line set by bookmakers is a totals bet, also known as an over/under bet. When placing a totals bet, the only thing that matters is the combined total number of points scored by both teams.
The actual winner and loser of the game do not matter in regards to your bet. So instead of cheering for one side over the other, all you are doing is pulling for the offenses to have big days or rooting for all defense.
Totals bets also come with a typical payout of -110 to give the book its juice. And as with point spread bets, the over/under line will move if the betting on both sides isn’t equal.
Before the advent of the point spread, all single-game bets were placed on the moneyline. A bet on the favorite paid less, and a bet on the underdog paid more. Just how much more was decided by the bookmaker based on how unlikely the team was to win.
If you don’t want to mess with point spreads, you can bet the moneyline, where the only thing that matters is which team wins and which team loses.
The favorite for the game is expressed with a negative number, meaning that it will pay less than the amount you wagered. The underdog for the game is noted with a positive number, which shows that a winning bet will pay more than what was wagered.
For example, if you bet on the Bills to win at -145, that means in order to win $100, you must wager $145. If the Bills are playing the Jets and New York is listed at +130, that means a $100 wager on the Jets will pay $130 in profit if they win.
Moneyline wagers also include vig, with the negative number of the favorite always being larger than the positive number for the underdog.
The final type of single-game betting you will encounter is live betting, also called in-play or in-game betting. These are bets that you can place throughout the course of a game and after it has already started. Instead of just new point spreads at the quarter and half, you can bet a dynamic and changing spread at any point during the game.
You can place wagers on the outcomes of drives or even specific plays. Will they convert this third down via the pass or run? Will this punt be a fair catch or return? Will this field goal be good, short, wide right, or wide left?
Almost anything that is happening in the game can be wagered in real-time.
Types of Multi-Game NFL Bets
You are most likely going to put the majority of your bets on single games. But there are opportunities to add those single bets into larger group bets that pay more money, and you should know about them.
Parlay Bets
If your research has given you multiple games to bet, or multiple bets within the same game (like a point spread and over/under), you can either place all those bets individually or combine those bets into a parlay.
Parlay bets come with an escalating payout scale that generally looks like this, although some sportsbooks may vary.
- Two-teams: 2.6 to 1
- Three-teams: 6 t0 1
- Four-teams: 11 to 1
- Five-teams: 22 to 1
- Six-teams: 45 to 1
And on and on it goes, although you will find some sportsbooks that put a cap on the number of bets you can bundle into a parlay.
If you’re going to bet on six individual games, why not bet them all in a massive parlay? The payout would be huge.
And yes, that is true if you hit the parlay. But it is also very true and far more likely that you will lose one or more of your games, and the entire parlay will be a loser.
Teaser Bets
This is a parlay bet in which you can move the point spread to be more favorable. For football teasers, you can move the spreads by 6.0, 6.5, and 7.0 points, with each shift in points leading to a smaller payout.
How it works is simple. Let’s say you have the Ravens -3, Chiefs -6.5, and Eagles +4.5 in a three-team parlay. If you tease that parlay by 6.0 points, your actual wager will be Ravens +3, Chiefs -0.5, and Eagles +10.5.
Win all three of those games at the new point spreads, and you will win the teaser.
Proposition Bets
Futures Bets
The last type of NFL bet is a futures bet, which is exactly as it sounds. These are bets on things that are happening in the future, and sometimes as much as a full year in the future, like the winner of the next Super Bowl.
You can also bet on which teams will win the division and make the playoffs, plus bet the over/under on-season win totals for a team. There are also individual futures bets, like the winner of the MVP, Rookie of the Year, and Offensive and Defensive Player of the Year.
NFL Betting Strategies
With an entire week to talk about each of the NFL’s 16 games, information is plentiful. It’s easy to find out which players are on hot streaks, who is struggling, and which teams are dealing with critical injuries.
The reality is that you aren’t going to become more informed than the bookmaker who set the line, which makes it hard to find value bets. That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t become more informed than your fellow bettors.
Go beyond the basic numbers. Who struggles to cover the tight end? What extra motivations exist on both sidelines? Where is the advantage on special teams?
Because the NFL is so ubiquitous in America and on television, a lot of people will bet on NFL games without doing much research. Be smarter and more informed than them, and it will pay off.
Once you’ve completed your research and dialed in on a game you think has a spread skewed by uninformed bettors, line shop. The margins in the NFL are razor-thin, so even just a half-point can make or break your betting Sunday.
If you win 53% of your bets, you will make money. At only 52%, you are losing money. So never short-change yourself by not looking for that tiny edge on the point spread.
But never, ever, chase a loss by betting on a game you had previously decided to avoid. If you win 53% of your bets, that means you will lose 47%. The surest way to raise that losing percentage is to bet a game simply because you’re mad you just lost. Before each Sunday, create a betting plan and then stick to it.
Sports Betting How To Guide
How Money Line Works?
Moneyline betting is by far the easiest way to place a sports wager. There are no point spreads to parse, no garbage-time free throws to ruin your betting day, and no last-minute meaningless touchdowns to take you from a winner to a loser.
How to Bet Odds
When we, as sports fans, learned our multiplication tables, we aced the number 7. Seven, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42 were easy because we all watched football on the weekends. Multiplication by sevens, then add a three, a six after a missed PAT.
How to Bet on NFL Games
Baseball is America’s pastime, but football is America’s crazed passion, with its weekly schedule of games, millions of television viewers across the country and the world, and the billion-dollar stadiums that serve as Sunday cathedrals in 32 American cities.
What is the Spread?
If you are a golfer or have ever played on a bowling team, think of a point spread like a handicap. It is a way for two teams of differing abilities to play each other on equal footing. The better team, and the favorite in the game, gives a certain amount …
