CHAPTER 23Is Vegas Good at Picking NFL Games?
A 2017 Gallup poll (news.gallup.com/poll/4735/sports.aspx) indicated that for 37% of Americans, NFL football was the favorite sport to watch, with basketball, at 11%, a distant second. Betting on sports has been legal in Nevada since 1949, and in England since 1961. In May 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in the 6-3 Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association decision that individual states could set up their own framework to conduct legalized sports gambling. In this chapter, we will explain how the most common NFL bets work and show that Las Vegas is fantastic at predicting the outcome of NFL games. Our discussion also applies to betting on NBA games as well as NCAA football and basketball.
How NFL Betting Works
Most betting on the NFL involves three types of bets:
- Point spread bets
- Totals bets
- Money line bets
We use the 2019 Rams versus Patriots Super Bowl to illustrate how these bets work.
Point Spread Bets
For each game, Vegas forecasts a margin of victory. In the 2019 Rams versus Patriots Super Bowl, the Patriots were a 2.5-point favorite. Let's consider $10 as our unit bet. If you bet $10 on the Rams, you win the spread bet and $10 if the Rams lost by 2 points or less (or won), and you lose the spread bet and $11 if the Rams lost by 3 points or more. In a similar fashion, a $10 spread bet on the Patriots would win and pay $10 if the Patriots won by 3 points or more and lose the spread bet and $11 if the Patriots ...
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