Sports Betting in the US: a Brief Heads Up

Sports Betting, particularly on US sports, can seem a little daunting to the uninitiated.

But with the likely loosening up of regulations on Sports Betting in the US (which is currently prohibited everywhere except Nevada, of course) and the new NFL (American Football) season about to kick off, it seems good timing to give you a brief heads up of how things work.

First of all, one of the key things to remember about American Sports Betting is that when you see a number with a negative in front of it, it is stating how much you would need to bet to accrue $100 (or Euros or whatever currency you are playing in).

You will often see a figure of -110, so you would need to stake $110 to get a return of $100.

This does not mean you wouldn’t be able to bet other amounts – staking $11 would return winnings of $10 for instance (you always get you stake back in US Sports Betting) – it’s another way of expressing odds of 10:11.

But why would the odds stay at 10:11 all the time?

That’s simply because Sports Betting operators in America tend to offer those odds on a certain outcome, for instance a spread of points scored or the total number of points scored in a game.

Any + before a number states how much you would win if you bet 100.

Let’s take the following example, with a game between the Carolina Panthers vs the Atlanta Falcons.

Falcons   -10        -110

Panthers   46      +290

Let’s look at the numbers on the right first; these will be the kind of figures you can be presented with in any sports book.

The Falcons are favourites to win, betting $110 on them to win will get you $100.

Conversely, if you bet $100 on the Panthers to win and they do, you’d get $290.

There are a couple of other popular ways to bet on an NFL game.

One is the ‘Total Bet’, where you bet on the total amount of points scored, again at odds of 10:11 (usually). This is what the ‘46’ refers to above – you can bet on the total points scored being either above, or below, 46 (if it is exactly 46 your stake will push back).

‘Straight Bets’ are a bet on the spread of the score – this is referred to by the ‘-10’ noted above. You would bet either that the Falcons won by 10 or more points or the Panthers lost by 9 or fewer (with exactly 10 pushing back) at 10:11 again.

Remember, if a ‘-‘ appears before a team name, that means that it is the favorite to win.

There are other types of sports bets available on NFL games, including those varieties which link together a whole series of matches, so watch this space and we’ll fill you in on how those work soon as well!