Sports betting pointspreads are the most common form of sports betting lines. They are primarily used for pro and college football, along with pro and college basketball. Let’s consider some sportsbetting pointspread examples.
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SPORTSBOOK BETTING LINES
Sportsbetting pointspreads will have one team favored and one team getting points. An example of how the sportsbetting pointspread lines would look would be UCLA -2.5/Arizona +2.5. Sportsbetting gamblers taking Arizona would need the Wildcats to either score an upset win or to lose by less than 2.5 points. Sportsbetting gamblers taking UCLA would need the Bruins to win by more than 3.5 points.
A major factor in the sports betting pointspread lines is the “juice,” which is also referred to as “vig.” The juice/vig is the extra ten-percent that an online sportsbetting gambler must wager above whatever amount he is trying to win. For example, if you wanted to take Arizona in our example to win $100, you would have to wager $110. The same, of course, would hold true for UCLA. The vig/juice is the sportsbook fee for covering all bets.
The winning online sportsbetting gamblers will, of course, get their vig back along with all stake money and winnings but gamblers on the losing side will forfeit all of their stake money, including the vig. As long as the sportsbooks get equal betting action and money wagered on both sides of a game, they are guaranteed to make money.
The juice/vig factor goes beyond that obvious ten-percent that you have to put up when wagering on the sportsbetting pointspread lines. It is a big factor, in fact, with how the sportsbetting lines are made in the first place.
Since the online sportsbetting sites are trying to get equal action on their games, they want the oddsmakers to set up online sportsbetting lines that will accomplish that objective. This means that the sports betting oddsmakers must be in tune with the gambling public and know which side of a game that they are likely to wager on and then set the betting lines high enough on that side in order to attract action to the other side as well. This means that the sports gambling lines are not set on the pure merits of the matchup but are, instead, set up to ensure that both sides are equally appealing to the public.