What Is a Moneyline Bet in Sports Betting?

If you’re new to sports betting, you should familiarize yourself with the moneyline bet. This wager is one of the most common markets due to its simplicity and wide availability.

While the moneyline involves choosing the winner of a game, you’ll want to know more about it, including how the odds affect your potential payout and what strategies can help you optimize your bankroll.

Learn everything you’ll need to know about moneyline betting in this comprehensive guide.

Moneyline betting involves wagering on who will be the outright winner of a sporting event. Every sporting event will have a moneyline price attached to the two teams competing, with the price indicating your payout if you win your

The team you bet on needs to win by just a minimum of one point as the spread doesn’t matter like it does for spread bets. Every game will have a favored team with negative odds and an underdog with positive odds.

Moneyline betting can be a good way to amp up profit with units. Let’s consider two games to illustrate this. If you bet $100 on the San Diego Padres at +150 the first day and they lose, you are down $100. The following day, you bet $100 on the Padres again at +170 and win. Your winning bet has now made you a profit of $70 over those two bets.

While not all sports have a point spread bet available, every sport has a moneyline bet attached to it. Football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, and even combat sports have moneylines.

Some sports, such as hockey and soccer, have 3-way betting available. That allows you to be on the moneyline for each team, or you can bet that the game will head into overtime. For instance, if a game between the Las Vegas Knights and Winnipeg Jets has a 3-way betting line, bettors can wager on the Knights to win, the Jets to win, or the game to go into overtime.

The 3-way line is different, mainly due to the implied probabilities of each occurrence. Las Vegas is +167 ($100 to win $167), Winnipeg is +133 ($100 to win $133), and the game to be tied at the end of regulation is +315 ($100 to win $315).

We will not pretend to know how the odds are produced. A lot of science, math, statistics, and computer models go into the values that sportsbooks attach to each game and outcome.

What we know is simple—each game will have a minus sign on one team’s odds and a plus sign on the other. The rare exception is for any game deemed to be even.

A moneyline favorite is the team expected to win. Their negative odds indicate how much you must bet to win $100.

For instance, a favorite with -900 odds would pay $100 if you successfully bet $900 on them. Favorites might have lower payouts, but that’s because they’re more likely to win.

The underdog is the team less likely to win and has positive odds, which display how much you win on a $100 bet. If the underdog has +600 odds, you’d win $600 on a $100 bet.

Betting on favorites is typical of the recreational bettor, so the underdog line has to be enticing to attract interest. While underdogs have worse odds, their potential payouts are much higher to match the risk.

Moneyline odds can vary significantly, with favorites sometimes having inflated odds and underdogs offering value. In rare cases, the opposite can occur to result in an even moneyline. Bettors often refer to these games as “coin flips” as both outcomes are equally likely and carry odds of -110 on either side.

Let’s use an NFL betting scenario to illustrate this. If the New England Patriots are a PK -110, there is no point spread for that game. The moneyline odds would also come in at -110. Simply put, one team is not more likely to win than the other team.

Calculating moneyline odds leads to a range of good things. For one, it allows you to understand potential payouts and map out your bankroll management strategy.

Another way to implement an effective bankroll management strategy is to shop the best lines. Sportsbooks come up with different lines by considering factors ranging from injury reports and last-minute changes to lineups to the weather, so you’ll want to know your options to score good value.

Strategies is a big word when it comes to gambling of any kind. Whether the conversation is geared towards the tables or the sportsbooks, we caution against ever getting caught in a “strategy.”

The best approach in all sports betting is money management. The industry standard for a long time was that no bet should be larger than 3% of your bankroll. Yes, that includes bets on the big games. In theory, your bet on the Super Bowl should be similar in size to that of a Week 10 Thursday night matchup between the Panthers and Bears.

Strategies aside, the goal in successful sports betting is to crack the 55% threshold for win rate, with finding plays as close to even as possible. But for a bettor that specializes in mostly moneylines, that “close to even” line matters even more.

Consider the example bettor below:

Not bad. 60% win rate and a profit of $120. But consider Bettor B as well:

It appears that they earned a higher net profit by keeping their average odds lower. You can accomplish a similar goal by shopping around for the best prices.

Like all aspects of betting, moneylines have pros and cons. Let’s briefly examine some below:

Some compelling reasons to make moneyline bets include:

Bettors may choose other wagers over moneyline bets because of the following cons:

We’ve created a list of frequently asked questions to make moneyline betting even simpler.

Betting the moneyline is arguably the easiest way to bet on a sporting event. You can bet on who you think will win between the favorite and the underdog.

There are a couple of atypical scenarios. If the game you wager on ended in a tie, the moneyline bet is still valid until overtime is completed. If the team you bet on the team to win after all overtimes are completed, you win your bet. When you bet on a hockey game or a soccer match, that may change the dynamics. Hockey and soccer betting allows 3-way betting. That means you can bet on Team A, Team B, or for the game to end in a tie. Betting on Team A or Team B would be a lost wager if the game goes to overtime.

The negative moneyline indicates that the team is a favorite. The value is how much money the bettor needs to risk to profit $100. If the Baltimore Orioles are -150, you need to wager $150 for a $100 win.

The answer to whether moneyline bets are good may vary among professional bettors. Moneyline bets can be good due to the implied probability of the favorite winning. On the flip side, a favorable underdog line can result in a big payout if it’s successful.

Unlike point spreads, where you have to worry about a team winning by a certain margin, moneyline bets only concern the outright winner of the game. Similarly to point spread betting, odds may change before the start of the game due to action coming in on either side. As the best sportsbooks adjust, line shopping becomes more crucial.

Let’s take a quick look at an example by using the most bet-on game in American sports. The 2024 Super Bowl between the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs commanded a whopping $23.1B handle. That $23.1B was wagered on point spread bets, moneyline wagers, and totals. The prop market has also seen an increase in money wagered.

The closing line tilted towards the Niners, making them the favorite at -125 on the moneyline. The Chiefs closed as the slight underdogs coming in at +108. A $125 wager on the Niners would have netted a $100 win if the Niners won. They did not. A similar bet of $100 on the Chiefs netted a $108 return.

Moneyline odds are already calculated based on implied probabilities of a particular outcome. A betting odds converter can show you the possible winnings of a particular bet by simply entering the bet amount, bet type, and moneyline odds. The converter can produce your potential winnings from either American odds, decimal odds, or fractional odds. This tool also lets you know what the implied probability of winning your bet is. Utilizing this free tool is useful for novice bettors to understand the intricacies of traditional moneyline bets.

You can place a moneyline bet on various sports. Whether placing a wager in a brick-and-mortar casino or at one of the many available online sportsbooks, moneyline wagering is available on the NFL, NCAAF, NCAAB, NBA, NHL, MLB, tennis, combat sports, and more.

The Inquirer is not an online gambling operator, or a gambling site. We provide this information about sports betting for entertainment purposes only.