*Please note that some higher lines did not have enough games to qualify as significant data. We then used our money line calculator to take the percentage of wins and convert it into the American format. So, I’ve broken the data into four groups: home favorites, road favorites, home underdogs and road underdogs.

There are obviously significant differences between certain situations. If the actual moneyline comes in lower than the expected moneyline then history says you are not getting value on your wager.Īs you’ll see, it’s pretty rare to find instances where taking the money line is a valuable play. The expected moneyline for 2-point home underdogs is +119. The actual line you would get would be something close to +105.

Say you see a home underdog of +2 and decide you might as well take the money line. The problem is a book would make you pay around -206 (actual moneyline) for a -3.5-point favorite. If you look at the chart we’ve converted that to a money line of -175 (expected moneyline). Why is this something you need to know? Home favorites of -3.5 win the game 63.61% of the time. The “actual moneyline” is what a typical sportsbook would set for each spread. We took the win percentages for all NFL games since 1980 at each line and converted them into a money line. What I’m interested in when looking at the weekly NFL odds is whether certain moneyline bets are profitable.

On the flip side, you could bet a 3-point underdog at +135 to win outright, meaning you would wager $100 to win $135. This means you would need to wager $164 to win $100 on that team. There is just an increase in the juice based on the percentage of chances of a team winning outright.įor example, the money line on a 3-point home favorite in the NFL would have odds like -164 to win the game outright. You are essentially wagering on who you think will win the game. For those of you who aren’t familiar with betting the money line in the NFL, it’s simple.

Odds of winning nfl game point spread