When the betting lines at top-rated sportsbooks move, should you wait or pounce? Our handy guide will show you how to get the best odds at the right time.
The Wisdom of Sharps
How do the wiseguys make so much money betting on sports? The same way any smart investor does: by keeping track of the odds. When the betting lines move, the sharps are on top of it. Maybe they’ll bet bigger or smaller – or maybe they’ll stand pat.
It all depends on the lines and where they’re headed.
Because reading the lines is so important, it’s one of the first things you should learn if you’re relatively new to sports betting.
Here’s the good news: it’s easy. We’ll break it down for you right now, so you can start your journey on the road to profit.
How Are Betting Lines Made?
Put yourself in the shoes of the sportsbook for a moment.
Your No. 1 job is to bring in as much betting action as possible; in a typical game scenario, there will be people who want to bet on Team A (or Player One), and people who want to bet on Team B (or Player Two).
Let’s go ahead and make Super Bowl LIII our example game.
It’s the New England Patriots – still with Tom Brady at quarterback – against the Los Angeles Rams. What odds would you put on each team to attract maximum money from your customers?
If you want more Patriots money, you could give them longer odds, like Patriots +1 on the point spread. But if you do that, the Rams will be –1, and you’ll get less action from Rams supporters.
Then you have the other side of the coin. If you make New England’s odds shorter, maybe Patriots –7, then you’ll get less action from Pats fans – but plenty more from L.A. bettors pounding the Rams at +7.
Somewhere in between these two extremes is the sweet spot.
As it turned out, most online sportsbooks opened Super Bowl LIII with the Patriots as 1-point favorites. This wasn’t Vegas “predicting” that New England would win; it’s just the books trying to make a buck.
Why Do Betting Lines Move?
As a bookmaker, you also have Job No. 2: reducing your exposure.
Let’s say you made the Patriots 1-point underdogs, and literally everyone is betting on them.
What happens if the Pats win? You’ll have to pay out all those bets, but you haven’t brought in any action from L.A. supporters. That means you’ll go bankrupt if your pockets aren’t deep enough.
There’s a simple way to avoid this fate.
By making New England’s odds shorter in response to all that action, and making the Rams the underdogs, you’ll attract more of that Rams money to help balance the books.
In an ideal world, you strike a perfect balance between the two, so no matter which team prevails, you pay off the winning bets with the money you’ve collected from the losers – and you keep the vigorish for yourself.
Do you see it yet? Here’s how multiple sportsbooks set their opening line for Super Bowl LIII:
- New England –1 (+110)
- L.A. Rams +1 (–110)
Remember, at the standard –110 juice, bettors are risking $110 to win $100 (or $11 to win $10, or any multiple thereof).
To simplify things, let’s say you pulled in $110 on the Patriots and $110 on the Rams, for $220 in total. New England ended up winning 13-3, so you returned $210 to your Pats supporter – that’s their original $110 wager, plus $100 in earnings. You get to keep the remaining $10 for a job well done. And it would have worked out the same way if the Rams had covered instead.
How Can I Profit From Line Movement?
Once you understand this dynamic, you can start anticipating when the sportsbooks might start moving their lines in response to the larger betting public.
Generally speaking, the public tends to bet on the teams and players they like (Tom Brady’s Patriots were extremely popular), without giving much thought about which team is actually better – or by how much.
Tom Brady is betting his Super Bowl ring on Michigan against Ohio State 😅🍿 pic.twitter.com/e9aLpB2Rmv
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) November 15, 2023
That’s why underdogs often have the betting value, and why it’s often a good idea to wait until closer to game time to bet on them, after the public has waded in and the lines have moved in response.
Indeed, by the time Super Bowl LIII had kicked off, the odds on the Rams had grown as long as +3.
Exposure isn’t as much of a concern for sportsbooks these days, but the general concept behind this dynamic still holds true. And now that you know how to read the line movement, you can take advantage by placing sharper bets at the right times for maximum profit.
