To fully understand point spreads you must understand in part how bookmakers work. A sports book makes money by getting the amount bet on either side of a contest to be as equal as possible. This way, they can pay off the winners with the losers’ money and keep the extra fee the losers’ must pay (called the ‘juice’ or ‘vigorish’) for themselves. The sportsbook or online gambling site is not in the business of gambling themselves. They do not care who wins, as long as the money is basically even.
Using Point Spreads to Even Odds
However, many sporting contests are not even matches. When the Boston Celtics play the Washington Wizards, the Celtics – with Pearce, Garnett and Allen – are expected to win a large portion of the time. This means all the money will go on the Celtics, which could mean potential disaster for the bookmakers. To resolve this problem, point spreads were created. The point spread is the amount the favored team must win by in order for a bet on that team to win. It represents just how much better one team is assumed to be over the other.
Point Spread Example
In our Celtics-Bengals game, if the game is played in Boston, the line may appear: Celtics +10 Wizards. If the game were played in Washington, it might read Celtics -10 Wizards. Either way what it means is that the Celtics must win by more than 10 points for a bet on the Celtics to be a winner. If you bet on the Wizards and the final score is Celtics 80, Wizards 75; Celtics 77 Wizards 70 or Celtics 90 Wizards 81, you win. If the final score is Celtics 90 Bengals 89; Celtics 77 Wizards 65 or Celtics 88 Wizards76, you lose, and a bet on the Titans is a winner.
More on Point Spreads
Creating point spreads is not an exact science, and there will be times when a team wins by many more points than they are favored to win by, while there are other times where the underdog will win even when they are getting many points with the spread. However, point spreads are an effective way to make it fair to bet on either team.
