Futures sports betting explained: How to read the odds and tips to win futures bets

But the actual number itself, ignoring the plus-minus sign, will always be the same for both teams, because, again, that’s the expected margin of victory. If you want to gamble or you are confident in your outcome, you can always just stick with your original bet. Again, these odds mean exactly the same thing as in the money line format.

Are Futures Bets Worth It?

You can make a futures wager either before or after the season starts. However, the timing of your bet can make a huge difference in the odds. An important thing to keep in mind is that once you make a futures bet, you have to ride it out. If you decide later that you might have made a mistake, you can’t take it back. Of course, you can make a different bet, but by then the odds might have changed and may not be to your liking.

• It can also stand to win you quite a bit of money if you’re right.
• If you’re betting in person, you need to make sure that you have the cash withdrawn from your account.
• Each league’s championship futures odds are usually the first to be released.
• Meanwhile, the Cowboys didn’t make the playoffs in 2025 and have not made any major moves in the offseason, so their odds are around +6000.
• As you can see, you can pick the winner of any division to make a futures bet on.

There are a few key sports bettingstrategies for betting on futures. One idea that we have emphasized is that, in general, the earlier you place your futures bet the better odds you will receive since odds change throughout the season. Since the odds change, it presents an opportunity to do something called “hedging”. Sometimes sportsbooks will only show the favorite teams, but you can generally get odds and place a bet on any team you like. As you can see, because there is a long season ahead with many variables, there is plenty of value in predicting who will win. On this page, you can find everything you need to know about futures.

Start exploring futures sports betting

In fact, there is a huge market for bets outside of game-day markets that a lot of bigger sportsbooks provide for their players. Before we can go any further, we need to make sure that everyone here fully understands what hedge betting is as it pertains to sports betting. Hedge betting, by definition, is a counter wager made against another wager to guarantee profit regardless of the outcome of a game or contest.

Even if you know everything there is to know about the NFL and how to bet and in general, there are still some tips and tricks that can often be overlooked at the sportsbooks. Here are a few things to implement before you place your wagers for the season ahead. Let’s say you have some interest in betting the Yankees over the Red Sox.

This shows why it is a good idea to think long-term in future bets. The winner of a game happening tonight would not count as a futures bet. The winner of the next Super Bowl, however, is a perfect example. Fight lines for future fights go in the category of upcoming events.

If you take a season-long wager, it can keep you engaged with a team all year. If the total combined score winds up higher than the projected total, then the OVER wins. If the final score total is lower than the projected total, then the UNDER wins. More often than not, the runline is -1.5 or +1.5 with differing odds attached to either side. You’ll only really see -2.5/+2.5 when the favorite is an overwhelming favorite — think the Dodgers with their ace versus the Athletics in a bullpen game. What you can access depends on the sport, but Bovada is one of the best for this.

Alternatively, you can invest in an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that tracks the commodity’s value. While you might have to pay an expense ratio on the fund, it’ll save you from having to manage a futures position or qualify for a futures trading account. Futures can be useful, however, to invest in assets outside of standard stocks, bonds, and real estate investment trusts (REITs). Instead of buying an energy stock, for example, you can buy a futures contract for oil.

NFL Week 7 Betting Report: Will Public Finally Move Off Prime-Time Favorites?

Just because some people refer to sports betting as gambling doesn’t mean you should throw your money away and “learn as you go.” For us, the overall censuses are that futures betting is worth it. You need to know what to bet on and the time your bets, but overall, they can be highly lucrative. Most betting sites will have sections that are dedicated to futures markets, making them easy to find. The table above shows that there are five teams in the division with their price on winning next to the name.

You limit the top end of what you can make, but by doing so, you are able to lock up some profits no matter the outcome of the game. We’ll take a look at some of the different situation where hedging would be beneficial in a later section of this guide. Now, a lot of you might be sitting there somewhat confused right now. How can making a bet against yourself ever guarantee that you’re going to make money? You see, there are a lot of situations where the odds on a particular bet are going to change. This creates opportunities for you to make a bet on the other side (against yourself) to guarantee yourself profits.

Sportsbooks often offer futures bettors the chance to bet a winner without the odds-on favorite, especially when it’s a heavy favorite like Team USA in men’s hoops. Since the USA has been between -500 and -650 all summer, you might want to bet on which team will win the silver medal so you can get better value. Since the various betting options open to you are organized by sport, first pick the sport that interests you, then click on either team futures or player futures.

National championship futures are updated weekly at sportsbooks as well. What you find most often during the preseason are conference championship and division lines. Also known as outright betting or “outrights,” futures betting focuses on events stretched over a wide time period, such as sports tournaments or leagues. You place bets on the outcome of these events, focusing either on individual players or teams. For example, you might bet Brazil will win the Soccer World Cup.

We’re going to take the market from the NBA and more specifically, the winner of the Atlantic Division. The first part is to find bets that offer the lowest margins. The second is to try and find +EV bets that we can eventually use to arbitrage.

We’ll disregard the fact that we think you’re crazy, but you went ahead and made this bet at 100 to 1. You decide to make the bet for $100 meaning that if the Dolphins are miraculously successful and win the Super Bowl, you will win $10,000. For much of the 2022 NFL Conference Championship week, the Chiefs were 7-point favorites, before so many bets came in on Kansas City that the Chiefs moved to 7.5. That might seem minor, but that .5 can be the difference between just getting your money back on https://bcgameindiaofficial.com/ a push when Kansas City wins or cashing a winning ticket. Say the Kansas City Chiefs are at home against the Cincinnati Bengals (hey, what a coincidence!). Most bettors will want to wager on the Chiefs to win, because winning the game is a very likely outcome for the better team at home.

As such, sportsbooks will remove said teams from their futures bets offers. You can also bet on players to win MVP, Cy Young, or any of the other major awards, or to finish as the regular-season leader in specific stat categories like home run king. As these are far less likely to predict way ahead of time, these futures bets often yield longer odds and therefore carry much higher potential payouts. You’re going to find that futures betting odds for teams outside of the top 2 or 3 picks will range massively from site to site. Markets tend to be relatively vast in that, you’ve usually got a lot of options to pick from. This is not always the case, but popular future bets include the Superbowl, NBA Championships, MLB World Series and the Stanley Cup.

You can pick the team that you feel you know the most about and find a futures bet about their season to suit you. We will get more specific and talk about how futures bets odds work a little later. For now, think about the one thing all of these examples have in common.