The leaves
are changing color, the nights are getting shorter and you can see
Brett Favre’s breath when he takes the field in Green Bay. That can
only mean that winter is almost here and the NBA has returned for
another season. Pardon the midseason interruption, but I would like to
quickly discuss the advantages of betting on basketball right now.
This is based on a (very) similar column I wrote last year, but I feel
it has enough merit to be rolled out every November.
Over
90% of our clients bet on football, but only 60-70% bet on basketball,
and that number surprises me. I personally feel that basketball may be
easier to bet for a few reasons, and that is what I want to talk about
in this issue. First, lets look at what these two sports have in
common. From the House’s point-of-view, football and basketball are
the bread-and-butter sports. These two sports alone account for
approximately two-thirds of annual betting handle with baseball,
hockey, golf, boxing, NASCAR, etc. making up the other 33%. There are
two main reasons for this: college programs, and
easy-to-understand lines.
Both
football and basketball have college programs that
provide almost all the players for the professional leagues, while
college baseball and college hockey programs only get the players that
aren’t drafted directly out of high school or are seeking the
guarantee of a college education before taking the gamble of trying to
play professional sports. These college programs for football and
basketball are highly competitive, widely televised and popular for
wagering. For these reasons they allow us to watch future professional
superstars develop. Players like Michael Jordan and Peyton Manning had
outstanding college careers before their success in the pros. Betting
on college games accounts for roughly half of the total wagering on
basketball and a little less than that for football. Make no mistake,
on a per-game basis the wagering on the pros is much, much heavier,
but the sheer volume of college games (with as many as 80 boarded
college football games/week vs. 15 in the NFL and 250+ boarded college
basketball games/week vs. 50 or so in the NBA) makes up the
difference.
Other
than having the best players, college football and college basketball
are also popular in wagering terms for the same reasons the
professional versions are popular – easy-to-understand lines.
Football and basketball are both bet primarily using pointspreads and
totals with a built in vig of 10% - easy for bettors and easy for
bookmakers. Baseball, hockey and other sports rely on moneylines,
runlines, pucklines, etc. which confuse many bettors (especially
novices) and this confusion reduces the total handle on these sports.
I’ve been asked many times by neophyte gamblers as to why other sports
don’t adopt similar betting styles, and the answer is that the scores
don’t allow it. The average NFL game has about 40 points scored and
the average NBA game has a little over 190, while baseball averages
somewhere around 10, and hockey comes in a little under 6. The margin
of victory in a football or basketball game can easily range as high
as 20 points for either team with many games coming well over this
number. Once or twice a year a baseball game will end with a team up
20 runs, but the majority of games are decided by less than 4 runs. A
5-goal victory in hockey is considered a pounding and I don’t think
we’ll see a 20-goal victory in the NHL anytime soon. These wider
scoring ranges also show up in totals. A typical NFL game will have
10-60 points scored, an NBA game 160-220 where baseball is typically
confined to 2-15 and hockey 2-8. The smaller ranges for these other
sports make the likelihood of the final score landing on a line much
more probable and would dramatically increase the chances of
bookmakers getting sided or middled if pointspreads and totals were
used in the same way they are in football and basketball. The wide
range of potential margins of victory and totals in football and
basketball is large enough to allow spreads and totals to be offered
in the simple way that they are, which most bettors understand and are
willing to bet on.
Now
that we know what makes these two sports especially popular for
bettors, I want to talk a little more about the differences between
them and the advantages of betting basketball. First,
lets talk about the lines themselves. In previous issues, I’ve
discussed key numbers in football so I won’t go into too much detail,
but suffice it to say that there are no key numbers in
basketball. This means that when a book is offside on a
basketball spread or total, they simply move the number a half point
and see what happens, with little risk of a side or a middle. If the
exposure continues to build, the line can be moved again, and so on.
With football and its key pointspread numbers of 3,4,6,7 and 10, this
isn’t as simple for the house, and they must balance the action in
other ways so you get strange lines like +3 (-120). Basketball lines
are easier for the house to manage (which is good because there are so
many games) and as such they are easier for the bettors.
The
sports themselves lead to some advantages for basketball. The shape of
the ball is a simple difference. The odd shape of a football makes for
some funny bounces and adds an element of luck to things like kickoffs
and fumbles. It’s not very often that you see a basketball do
something unexpected on its own accord. Weather can also have a big
impact on football games, especially late in the season. No weather
worries for hoops bettors. Team size is a factor. In football you have
over 50 players on a team and at least 30 of those will see
significant playing time. In basketball, only 7 of the 15 players will
usually have an impact on the game. Fewer impact players to keep track
of makes handicapping easier. Basketball referees are full-time
employees while football refs only work weekends and usually work
another job during the week. I’m not saying football refs are worse
(just ask Mark Cuban about basketball officiating) and in fact the
smaller group of refs for basketball could impact a game more if one
official has a bad game. Another factor is the amount of scoring in
each game. A typical NFL game has around 8 scoring plays but a typical
NBA game has around 100 so the impact of one turnover is far more
dramatic in football than it is in basketball. Injuries are also far
more common in football. How many times have you bet a team and
watched a key player go down in the first quarter? It can sure be
frustrating. In my humble opinion, all these factors make basketball
easier to predict than football. As a result many books pay lower odds
on basketball teasers than they do for football.
There
is one major difference between the sports that probably explains why
fewer players bet basketball and that is the number of games played.
Football teams play just once a week so novice bettors have lots of
time to do research and make their plays. Many sports fans are
introduced to betting through football pools and parlay cards, which
work so well in football because of the one game per week nature of
the sport. Basketball teams play 2-4 times per week and less
experienced bettors may feel that the pace is too fast if they try to
spend the same amount of time handicapping every basketball game as
they do for every football game. This may be the main reason why so
many more bettors bet football than bet basketball.
I asked
a top handicapper for his opinion on basketball vs. football and he
sees the extra games as an advantage. In his own words: “I think the
key difference between basketball and football is that there are so
many more games. Because the season is much longer, each individual
game takes on less importance than a single football game, which could
be the difference between making the playoffs or not. With basketball,
the season really is a grind, and teams go through many up and down
periods. As a handicapper, I look for situations which might be ideal
for a team to have a letdown or, conversely, rebound off a poor
performance.” Being a professional, he may have more time to handicap
all the games than you or I do, but it’s all just a matter of not
trying to do to much and seeing the large number of games as an
opportunity.
In
summary, football and basketball offer almost identical betting
options, but basketball offers more opportunities and should be easier
to handicap. There are games every day and if experienced, bettors
don’t worry if they don’t get a play in every day. If you find
handicapping basketball intimidating, try following just a handful of
teams. This should give you 10-15 games to look at a week and as you
get more confident, you can expand from there. Expanding your gambling
horizons from the gridiron to the hardwood will increase your
opportunities to bump up your bankroll.
I don’t
have a lot of room left for Kent’s (BoDog’s top bookmaker) Line Move
of the Week, so I asked him to keep it short. Here is what he had to
say:
“The
Pittsburgh-Cleveland game was definitely the most interesting this
week. We saw a lot of Steelers’ money last week but the nature of
their playing style means you can’t just move the line up much past
–3. This week we were more aggressive in moving the line (from –3 –115
to –3 –120 to –3 –125) but we debated as a team whether to go to –3.5
or not. We decided to try –3.5 on Sunday morning as the Pittsburgh
action was heating up. We took a fair amount of action on the Steelers
at this number and so we were one of the few books that did well on
that game when the Browns missed a late extra point that would have
(and should have!) made the score Steelers 23-21. I hate moving off 3
as bettors tend to snap up the dog at +3.5 but lucky for us they
didn’t in this case”.
My
thanks to Kent as I know he was out late last night, dancing with the
BoDog girls at the Cuartel (a great nightspot in San Jose, especially
on Monday nights). I will be back next week with one more look at
basketball before returning to our regularly scheduled football
programming.
I
always welcome comments, questions and suggestions via email at
rob@bodog.com
Rob Gillespie
Operations Manager
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