Ross Bennellick is armed with a BA in Screenwriting and an MA in Creative Writing, he combines his love of sacks, Anaconda Chokes, and bicycle kicks with his storytelling skills to provide insightful analysis, tips, and strategies. Ross developed his unique perspective and passion for sports at high school, where he played rugby, basketball, and cricket. He covers a wide range of leagues and disciplines, including the NFL, NCAA, NBA, soccer, rugby, cricket, and UFC, offering a versatile, engaging, and informative take on the world of sports betting and the current legal landscape in the US. Away from Basketball Insiders, you will also find Ross's work at GiveMeSport and the Florida-based MMA platform, FightBananas (among others).
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Following his graduation with an Honors in Business Administration, Nick redirected his focus from conventional stocks and bonds to the world of sports team performance investments. He employs a unique blend of advanced statistics and historical data to construct intricate sports investment models, pinpointing value opportunities and consistently yielding profits. Nick's contributions extend beyond a single platform, as his work can be discovered on outlets such as Pistons Powered, Winners And Whiners, and numerous other publications.
All posts by Nick RaffoulIf you’re looking to learn more about point spread betting and the best Spread betting sites, then you’ve come to the right place.
In this article, we’ll help newbie online gamblers to answer questions related to spread betting, detailing the best sports spread betting sites, provide examples and detailed explanations at every turn to help increase your success rate when point spread betting online.
What Does Spread Mean in Betting?
Point spread betting is a simple betting market that accommodates a small margin of error on both sides of a bet. When a player bets the point spread, oddsmakers will have pre-determined the difference in the number of points that they feel two teams/fighters, etc. will be separated by. A positive (+) number is then issued to the underdog, and a negative (-) number is awarded to the favorite.
What this essentially does is to give the underdog a slight advantage heading into the game, as well as increase the difficulty for the betting favorite. The game has changed. It’s no longer a case of ‘will the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Jacksonville Jaguars’ (of course they will!). Now, instead, it’s ‘will the Buccaneers beat the Jaguars by -11.5 points, or will the Jaguars pull off an upset or lose by less than +11.5 points.
Note: Point spreads are usually displayed in the half-point format with the .5 decimal to avoid betting ties.
Still asking, ‘what does spread mean in betting?’ Read on:
How Does Spread Betting Work?
If you’re still asking yourself, ‘how does spread betting work?’ – then we direct your attention to the image above where you’ll see the spread betting market for the Cincinnati Bengals vs Baltimore Ravens NFL clash. Let’s break it down:
- The Bengals are the underdogs for this game – it’s easy to tell because of the + sign (+6.5) which indicates as much
- The Ravens are the favorites for this game, which is why their betting spread has a minus (-6.5) symbol before it
- So, how does sports spread betting work here? It’s simple: if you wager on the Bengals at +6.5, in reality, you are challenging the Bengals to either win the game as the underdog or to lose by less than 6.5 points. If either of those two outcomes were to bear fruit, your bet would payout at -116 odds as listed. If the Bengals lose by seven or more points, your bet loses.
- The Ravens, on the other hand, have been challenged to not only defeat Cincinnati but to do it in style, winning by a margin of -6.5 points. If the final score is Ravens 30-23 Bengals – a -7 differential – your bet wins and pays out at odds of -104 as listed. However, if Joe Burrow and co. make a fist of the contest and end up losing by between one & six points, your bet loses.
Do note, however, that we are talking about American spread betting in this article. European/Asian spreads are quite different. In Europe, spread betting is known as the ‘handicap,’ and spread betting refers to when the odds change but the line remains.
Point Spread Betting Explained
In the US, point spread betting is exactly as detailed in the above segment about spread betting, which is why we used the two terms (point spread betting and spread betting) interchangeably during the mini-reviews.
It is, however, important to remember that sometimes the sports betting spread might go under another name, such as the Puck Line in the NHL, or the Run Line in the MLB, and sometimes the spread will be a lot higher than it is in grid-iron football because, quite simply, more points tend to be scored in the NBA than in the NFL.
The underlying principles of point spread betting are the same as in the previous example with the Bengals and Ravens. But, to be clear, let’s take a look at a few other sports spread betting markets:
NFL Spread Betting
NFL point spreads remain the nation’s most popular betting line. The spread works perfectly in football because the joy of the NFL is in its competition – oftentimes it’s impossible to guess who will win. It’s much, much easier to state whether or not you think it will be a blowout or a tightly contested affair by betting spreads instead.
Something to remember when betting NFL spreads:
- The wider the gap on the spread, the more unevenly matched the two teams are. So, if you look at the NFL spread betting selection in the Bovada image above, you’ll notice that the Falcons vs Dolphins game has a marginal split on the spread of just +/-3.5. That’s because both teams boast similar losing records, and oddsmakers have deemed this game a tight call; perhaps just a field goal in it. Further down the image, you’ll see the spread for the Packers vs Football Team that’s been set to +/-8. This is because the Packers are heavy favorites for the win.
The most common range found when NFL spread betting is the three-point range. This is because countless football games are won/lost by late fourth-quarter field goals.
As mentioned in the mini-reviews, Bovada is our preferred choice for spread betting NFL because the sportsbook also provides countless alternate spreads. This means that if you’re confident the Packers are going to stuff the Football Team by -15 points, you can wager on the outcome at increased odds.
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NBA Spread Betting
Basketball is more of a marathon than a sprint, in that the vast majority of the action takes place towards the end of the event. During the closing ten minutes or so of an elite basketball game, it’s common for the lead to change hands multiple times and for big leads to eviscerate as squads rest tired big-name stars for the next contest.
So, for most NBA games, the spread is a lot lower than you might think, usually hovering around the +/-3 – +/-7 mark. There are exceptions to this, however: if the reigning champions Milwaukee Bucks play the consensus-agreed worst team, Houston Rockets, for example, you can expect to see an NBA point spread nearer the +/-10.5 mark – maybe more. Unless you’re a fan of NBA betting against the spread, you might wish to go with the Bucks should this line crop up this year!
Sites like Bovada provide tons of options on the NBA alternate spread market anyways, so you don’t need to get too bogged down in the logistics of the spread set by oddsmakers.
That said, though the site doesn’t boast much in the way of NBA spread betting alternates, we do prefer to use BetOnline for basketball because the odds are usually slightly more advantageous and the site offers more video live streams of select basketball matches than the chasing pack.
College Football Spread Betting
The only big point of difference between sports spread betting on NBA/NFL games compared to their college counterparts is that the spread tends to be a LOT wider for college games.
This is because we regularly see huge blowout wins in both the NCAAB and NCAAF. If you avert your attention to the image above, you’ll see the football spread betting gulf between No.2 ranked side Cincinnati and unranked Navy is -/+28.0! This is because Cincinnati is expected to completely obliterate Navy, and it’s much the same with the NCAAB fixtures – expect to routinely see wider spreads in the college games.
When it comes to point spread betting college basketball and football, we do vouch for BetUS because of the TV content the site produces – the hosts are switched on and it’s not uncommon to get winning picks out of fifteen minutes of screen time with them.
However, because of the deep markets and countless alternate spreads, Bovada is our go-to for the college game.
What does + and – Mean in Betting Spreads?
As detailed above, where betting spreads is concerned, the + sign indicates the underdog, meaning that the team has to either win or lose by less than the value of the + number in order for your bet to payout. So, for example, if you wagered on the Chicago Bulls on the NBA spread at +5.5, it means that should the Bulls either win the game as underdogs or lose the game by less than 5.5 points, your bet will payout.
The minus (-) sign indicates that the team is the favorite and has been challenged to win the game by a specified amount of points in order for your bet to payout. So, if Brooklyn Nets were listed on the NBA spread at -5.5, it means they need to win the game by six clear points minimum for your bet to win.
What is Betting Against the Spread?
Also known as ATS, Betting Against The Spread means that you are wagering on the underdog and the points in a specified game. So, in essence, you are wagering on the team with the + number.
So, when NFL betting against the spread, you’d be wagering on the Jaguars at +5.5 and crossing your fingers and toes for a win, for example.
What Does Covering the Spread Mean?
Covering the spread is a term used by analysts and bettors alike. The team that covers the spread is the favorite team (the one with the minus symbol) that beats the underdog by the exact/more points dictated in the spread.
If you look at the betting lines in the image above, you’ll see the Boston Celtics are the favorites to beat the Toronto Raptors on the NBA spread betting game line. If the result ends up being Celtics 100-90 Raptors (or really any score whereby the Celtics win by at least 6.5 points), we say that ‘Celtics have covered the spread,’ meaning they did what was asked of them from a betting perspective.
What does Beating the Spread Mean?
Beating the spread is the opposite of covering the spread. Using the same game (Celtics vs Raptors) seen above, should the Raptors either beat the Celtics as underdogs or lose by less than the specified 6.5 points set by the oddsmakers, we would say that ‘the Raptors have beat the spread.’
Why Go Line Shopping when Spread Betting?
The trick to making winning bets and maximizing your payouts when you do place a successful wager is to go Line Shopping. By line shopping around US spread betting sites, you’ll uncover the best odds and the best spreads for your selected sports wager. So, what are you looking for when you go line shopping?
Well, you want to find the best +/- spread betting line for your prediction. Let’s – for the sake of explanation – imagine that you favor the Ravens to beat the Bengals. However, when you checked the spread betting market for the game (as seen above), you were thrown off by the -6.5 spread. At the time of writing, these are the two top teams in the AFC North, so it could well be closer than a -6.5 point differential for the Ravens.
At this point, you need to be strong and avoid placing the bet until you’ve been line shopping. As detailed in the mini-reviews, MyBookie doesn’t offer much in the way of alternate spreads; the sportsbooks CTA is geared more towards competitive odds than it is the selection of markets. So, you’ll need to visit another site…
On this occasion, Bovada’s alternate market has come up trumps, offering narrower sports spread betting margins at decreased odds. So, if you are still confident that the Ravens will win, but feel better about them winning by just 2.5 points (-2.5), you can bet on that at Bovada with odds of -215 (as per the image above).
In terms of line shopping for value on the odds, there’s no difference between Bovada and MyBookie. However, a quick visit to BetOnline pays dividends on the moneyline (at least) on this occasion:
BetOnline offers the exact same odds on the Ravens vs Bengals spread betting market. However, the sportsbook also boasts fractionally better -275 (-280 on MyBookie & Bovada) odds on the moneyline.
This is just one particular example of hundreds and thousands of possible examples in which one site will better another based on the sport, date, etc.
The point of the example is more to champion the idea of opening multiple accounts at different sportsbooks so that you can take advantage of the better odds, better spreads, and all the bonuses and competitions, etc. on offer at all of them.
What is Closing Line Value?
The point spread is typically set by oddsmakers about a week before the scheduled sports event takes place. However, the spread does not always remain exactly as it was originally stated; there can be plenty of fluctuation over the course of the week, especially in injury-heavy sports such as the NFL or for events where the weather is likely to play a role, etc.
The spread as it is seen just before your sporting contest of choice gets underway is called the closing line. And professional bettors often assess themselves and their bets against the closing line value (CLV). They want to know if they placed their bets at the best possible moment to take full advantage of the spread and, thus, a higher probability of placing a winning wager.
For example, if a bettor vouches for Orlando Magic at -4.5 vs Cleveland Cavaliers on a Wednesday, but then the line closes just prior to the commencement of the game with Magic at -5.5, then it looks a good bet as you’ll need one point less than most other bettors who got the line at -5.5 just before tip-off.
As mentioned, seeking out CLV is a pro-betting tactic and something of a Vegas buzzword at the moment because, over time, it gives bettors a better chance of winning.
With that said, it’s not absolutely essential that you do it as a beginner – just focus on getting your selections right and placing simple bets and parlays, to begin with.
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What is spread betting?
What is the spread in betting?
