It seems that every sports program, app, or website has information about the betting line for a particular contest. I’m not really interested in learning to gamble, but I’d like to understand what they’re talking about. Is there a website or app that discusses this sort of thing? Or, can some Dopers enlighten me?
For example, my ESPN app tells me that the Detroit Lions are visiting Baltimore to play the Ravens tonight (Sept 22, 2025). Below that, it says “Spread: BAL -4.5 Total 53.5 ML DET +180” What does all that mean? Suppose I hope that the Detroit Lions win tonight. I bet (somewhere) $100 on the Lions to win. The game ends tonight with a score of DET 21 - BAL 14. How much do I win? What if the game ends in a tie? What if the score differential is closer than seven points? Do I lose no matter what if the Ravens end up winning the game?
I think you’re combining several bets with your formatting. The “ML Det+180” bit means if you bet $10 on Detroit you’ll get $28 back including your original stake. Ties would be void, you’d just get your money back.
Presumably they offer some fixed price you haven’t specified for betting whether Baltimore will win by 5 or more points or betting if the game will have 54 or more points total. Since you can bet both sides of the line that price will be less than even money. In American format that will be listed with a minus sign, and will be the amount of winnings they give you for every $100 you risk, i.e -95 would mean you’d get $195 back including your stake.
If you ever do start gambling there will probably be an option to change the odds format to decimal/European. This is so much simpler, it’s just a straight multiple of your stake.
Here are a couple of websites that you can peruse. There are a ton of different bets one can make on a sporting event. I would suggest start by learning the basics (money line, point spread, over/under, and, most importantly, the odds), before you try to figure out parlays and prop bets.
And do feel free to ask questions here. There a lot of Dopers who may occasionally place a small wager on the outcome of a game or two that may be able to help you understand things that are unclear about sports betting.
Those are three different bets that can be placed on the same game. BAL -4.5 means that someone betting on Baltimore wins if Baltimore “covers the spread” by winning by 5 or more. It isn’t listed, but bets on the spread, whether for the favorite or the underdog, are implied to be at -110, meaning that you have to bet 110 dollars to win 100 (a $110 dollar bet gets you $210 total, your original $110 plus the payout of $100).
The total of 53.5, AKA the over / under, is also implied to be a -110 bet, only in this case it’s about whether you think the total score will be 53 or less, or 54 or more. Payouts work the same way as they do by betting the spread. Occasionally, if there is more money on one side than the other, the sports book will change the odds slightly, usually to -105 to the side getting less money bet on it and -115 to the side getting more money bet on it. That means for the -105 you only have to bet $105 to win $100 rather than the usual $110. That extra $5, $10, or $15 is how the casino makes their money. Since bettors on both sides have to pay that extra money, the casino uses the money from the losing bettors to pay the winners and keeps that extra money as their cut. Assuming that they set the line correctly (which for the casino means getting about an equal amount of money bet on both sides), they will always come out ahead due to that extra money.
The last one, the money line bet, is a straight bet on one team or the other to win. For that one, there should be another number listed, something like BAL -200 (or maybe -210 or even -220), for people who want to bet on the Ravens to win without worrying about covering the spread. The -200, similar to the above, means you have to bet $200 to win $100, that is a $200 dollar bet would return $300 total.
Typically numbers less than 100 won’t be listed that way. Instead an underdog will have +105 rather than -95, meaning that if you bet $100 you get back $205 total if you win.
Ooh! Fun subject, provided I’m not putting my own cash on the line. A few extra details:
For a long time newspapers would run point spreads for NFL games and some college football games, but nothing else. In the old days there were sports books that took money line (or straight line, as it was called then) bets, but these all but disappeared when I was a child, possibly earlier. The problem was that while big upsets were POSSIBLE, they didn’t happen nearly enough for the books to avoid taking a beating on them. Keep in mind, too, that this was a time where powerhouses would routinely schedule multiple pathetic no hope cannon fodder sacrificial lambs (I’ve seen spreads going into the 60’s), so there were numerous instances were having a straight line at all was pure idiocy. Oh, and for some tales of abject misery on this board, four words: “only bet straight line” (and invariably took the side of those cupcakes).
In any case, the odds do not reflect the relative strength of the teams, but how much confidence the oddsmaker thinks the bettors have on those teams. That’s why you’ll see big spreads in college but NFL rarely goes above 14 or so. It’s not that blowouts don’t happen in the NFL, it’s that they’re much harder to predict.
There’s a lot of versatility in these bets, too. Over/under can be anything with a number: yards gained, 3-pointers made, time of possession, assists, what have you. Money line can encompass any number of teams or athletes; I see it all the time in the scrolling tickers on FS1, everything from MVP races to odds of winning the World Series. (I’d consider anything above +5000 a sucker bet, but you do you. )
A few extra details:
)