More and more US sports fans are now adding some more excitement to the action on the field, court or ice with a few sports bets on the game. The sports betting industry across the country and around the world continues to expand at a rapid base. While betting on sports is rather easy to do, creating a positive return on your investment can be a whole other story.
The industry leaders in the sports betting industry are still the offshore sportsbooks catering to the US market through their online betting sites. These pioneers actually started the online sports betting industry back in the 1990’s and they continue to take in billions of dollars of revenue today.
Online Sportsbooks Raise the Bar for US Sports Bettors
At first glance, you would think that there is an adversarial relationship between sports bettors and online sportsbooks. Bettors are always looking for an edge against the books and you often hear the term “beat the books” used to describe a betting strategy. The reality of this relationship is that nobody bets to lose. However, the online books already know that the majority of sports bettors will lose more than they will win.
There is a certain level of gamesmanship between the bettors and the books but the industry flourishes on one common denominator; commission. The standard commission on a bet is 10 percent and that is the main way online books make money. Their primary goal is to balance out the money bet on either side of a game and pocket the 10 percent.
Online books also know that the general betting public tends to lean towards betting favorites and the OVER on the total line. This is actually a built-in edge for the books since they can set their betting lines accordingly. If more money is naturally going to go towards favorites and the OVER, books will actually give the slight edge to underdogs and the UNDER when setting their betting lines and odds.
What Makes an Online Sportsbook a Top-Rated Site?
This theory gets amplified when it comes to marquee matchups in any major betting sport. NFL teams such as New England, Green Bay and Dallas are also going to draw more action when set as a favorite. You have the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA and the New York Yankees in MLB games as two other professional sports franchises with a heavy betting base.
Nationally televised games are also heavily bet due to the fact that sports fans love to watch the games they bet on. This is not as big a betting phenomenon as it used to be with the advent of streaming services to watch every game in a certain sport, but online books still react accordingly if the Patriots, Packers or Cowboys are playing in prime time.
What online sportsbooks do best is bring variety to the sports betting equation. While the majority of the total revenue generated by sports betting in the US is still on straight bets using the pointspread and total line for football and basketball games, that is just a very small portion of the actual betting options on the board at an average online book.
One of the best ways to climb out of the box while also improving your winning percentage is by expanding your overall sports betting strategy. A good starting point is by studying everything an online book has to offer for the actual sports you bet on.
The Legalities of Online Sportsbook Betting
Along with the standard pointspread and total line for any NFL game, there are also game, team and player prop bet options listed as you get closer to kickoff. You can also bet every major sport on the moneyline odds that set up an added risk for betting the favorite and a higher reward for betting the underdog straight-up in a head-to-head matchup.
