How To Gamble On Football Online

When it comes to legal NFL betting, there is a lot to learn. No one gets up in the morning and all of a sudden is an expert. There are many factors that play into how to gamble on football online, but the most pressing involve understanding the different types of game lines and wager types available, as well as what all those odds on the board actually mean. Professional sports bettors spend a lot of time studying team histories and win-loss records (and lots of other more granular data points and trends) before they make their decisions on who to back. Looking at how a team has performed throughout the last few seasons is vital information to have, for example, as are injury reports and individual player stats.

Here, our aim is to shed some light on all the basics involved in legally gambling on NFL football. We will tell you everything you need in order to get started on the right cleat, beginning with how to choose a legal NFL betting site to put your new knowledge to work. We will also tell you about some great online sportsbooks that let you legally gamble on NFL football over the Internet, no matter where you are in the country. Next, we will go over all the different ways you can bet, breaking down the intricacies involved in interpreting game lines, props, and futures. Finally, we will cover how to make sense of the odds and what they mean. We hope you find the material provided on this page to be helpful and informative, but even more than that, we hope it gives you the confidence you need to go out there and make some winning wagers!

Getting Started With Legal NFL Betting

Before we get into all the nuts and bolts of how to place a wager on NFL football, we need to go over some of the basics involved in getting started with legal NFL betting. First off, you need to make sure the sportsbook you join is a legal one. But how do you know if an online betting site follows the law? And what does the law say about sports betting, anyway? These are important questions, and we have the answers, so read on to find out how to gamble on football online.

Is Online NFL Betting Legal?

The simplest answer we can give you is yes, online NFL betting is legal. However, United States federal law used to make it impossible for companies outside of Nevada to operate sportsbooks. Fortunately, the law in question, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA, 1992), has finally been overturned as unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.

Still, even while PASPA was in effect, online sportsbooks located offshore could legally accept US players because they do not have to abide by the tenets of PASPA or other such laws (like the Wire Act or the UIGEA, which are both still in effect). In addition, you will not find any law that says American players cannot join an overseas online sportsbook, as all such laws go after bookmakers and not bettors.

Choosing A Legal NFL Betting Site

Now that you know why it is legal to bet on the NFL, we can move on to selecting a legal NFL betting site, of which there plenty. But there are many factors that go into choosing a quality online sportsbook. These include odds and wager types, deposit and payout methods, bonuses, customer service, and members-only features like live in-game play and mobile betting. The best online betting sites take a cue from traditional Vegas sportsbooks and add a whole slew of handy, convenient, and tech-savvy features. The sites listed below include a nice mix of all these elements.

Ways To Bet On The NFL

Those who want to know how to gamble on football legally have come to the right place. There are many things to learn and all kinds of ways to bet on America’s favorite sport. Here, we will explore some of these options. You will learn about the three main types of game lines, as well as futures and prop betting. We will tell you about some of the more popular wager options, and we will explain how to read and understand the odds and the American moneyline on which they’re based. After all, if you really want to know how to gamble on football online, you’ve got to learn these few basics first.

Odds Types And How To Read Them

In most applications, odds can be defined as the probability that something will or will not happen. In the case of sports betting, however, that’s not what they mean at all. This is actually a pretty common mistake that talking heads in the sports media make, as they confuse a team’s betting odds with a team’s statistical odds. Don’t do that! When it comes to sports, the odds indicate how popular a given outcome is with the betting public. If the Cowboys have -210 odds to beat the Redskins, that doesn’t mean they’re empirically more likely to win, it just means that that’s what the sportsbook has to advertise to get people wagering roughly equally on both sides of the bet.

In sports betting, odds can be viewed as public consensus as to which team is the favorite or the underdog. Crucially, odds also represent how much money you stand to win versus how much you have wagered. In sports betting, the odds are displayed as a game line, or “moneyline.” You can think of odds, in this regard, as the “price tag” for a given wager, and every bet on the boards always has an attached price.

Of course, the moneyline isn’t the only associated number you’ll find next to your player or team of choice when browsing the odds boards. In addition to the moneyline included with every wager (usually shown in parentheses), you’ll also come across numbers representing the point spread, the straight wager, and the over/under. Let’s examine each type of game line a little more closely.

NFL Straight Moneyline Bet

The NFL straight moneyline wager is the easiest game line to understand. Straight odds simply use the moneyline to show which team is the favorite and which is the underdog, while also using the same numbers to show you the price and payout of the bet. When looking at a moneyline, you will see the name of a particular team and a positive or negative number beside them. The positive number corresponds to the underdog and shows how much money you will win if you bet $100. Conversely, a negative number shows how much you have to wager to win $100, and this always represents the favorite. Remember, moneylines are not bet minimums, they simply represent the ratio of risk-to-reward for a given wager. Most legal NFL betting sites will accept minimum bets of as little as 50 cents to a dollar.

• Miami Dolphins +360 at New England Patriots -225

This is how a standard straight moneyline bet will look at your NFL betting site of choice. Here, the Fins are major underdogs; a $100 bet on them pays out a healthy $360 if they win. On the other side, the Pats are strong favorites, and you would have to wager $225 on them to win just $100. The bigger the underdog, the bigger the payout, and the bigger the favorite, the smaller the payout.

NFL Point Spread Bet

The point spread is a way for the bookmaker to handicap a given game – or, in other words, to even the odds to entice an equal amount of betting on either side of a bet. The way books do this is by adding points to the score of the team that is favored to lose (the underdog) and subtracting points from the team that is favored to win (the favorite). This way, there is a chance that a team could lose straight up but still “cover the spread,” and thus you would win a bet you might otherwise lose straight up. To understand the point spread in the NFL, just consider the following example:

• Pittsburgh Steelers +3.5 (-110) at Cleveland Browns -3.5 (-110)

Here, the Cleveland Browns odds show them to be 3.5-point favorites. Remember, the favorite “gives” points to the underdog, so the favorite in a spread bet will always have a negative number attached. The Steelers “get” those 3.5 points, so they – like all underdogs – have a positive number attached. In this matchup, the Browns have to win the game by 4 or more points to win the wager, while the Steelers can lose by up to 3 points and still win the bet. Regardless of which side you choose, you can see that the moneyline – or bet price – is the same on either side of the wager at -110. This means that a $110 wager will pay out $100. Books can adjust these numbers at will, so always pay attention to both the spread number and the moneyline when making a spread bet.

NFL Over/Under Bet

The third type of common game line is the over/under bet, which is also known as a totals bet. This type of line is a wager based on the combined total of points scored by both teams put together. The bookmaker comes up with a given total, and you have to bet on whether the actual total will be greater than (“over”) or less than (“under”) the bookmaker’s published number. This is why totals are commonly called over/under bets. Totals betting is good in certain situations, like if both teams are more or less evenly matched and it would be hard to pick a side to back. Here’s how a total might look on an NFL game:

• Denver Broncos at Kansas City Chiefs O/U 44.5 (-110)

In this contest, the sportsbook has set the over/under (or O/U) to 44.5 points. If you think the Broncs and Chiefs will score at least 45 combined points, you would take the over, and if you think they’ll score fewer than 45 combined points, you’d take the under. In this example, both wagers have a moneyline price of -110, though books can offer different moneylines on either side as they wish. Half-point increments are often used to prevent the total from hitting on the exact number posted by the sportsbook, as this would result in a “push” and cause all bets to be refunded.

NFL Prop Bets

Besides the three main types of game lines, online sportsbooks offer a range of proposition bets, or props for short. This type of bet is a wager on some in-game event or achievement that does not necessarily have anything to do with the actual outcome of the game itself. Prop bets can be offered on pretty much anything, and they can get very specific.

NFL prop bets are divided into three main categories: team props, player props, and game props. An example of a team prop would be how many points a specific club will score before halftime. An example of a player prop would be how many touchdowns a team’s starting QB will score. An example of a game prop would be how many touchdowns will be scored by both teams during the game. Props are always shown in the over/under (or “yes/no”) format.

As a general rule, the bigger or more popular a given matchup, the more props you will have to choose from at legal NFL betting sites. The biggest games of all – like the Super Bowl – might even come with a fourth kind of prop, the so-called “broadcast prop.” These types of wagers are only available at offshore NFL betting sites, and they can include silly things like how many Budweiser commercials will air during the game, what color sneakers the half-time singer will wear, and what color of Gatorade shower the winning coach will be doused in. For the most NFL betting props, you'll want to give props to the top offshore betting sites!

NFL Futures Bets

NFL futures bets are simply wagers on far-off outcomes that have not yet taken place or potential league awards or season-long statistical thresholds that a given player might achieve. Futures could be posted days, weeks, months, or even an entire year in advance. Take the Super Bowl: this is the biggest, most-watched sports event in the world. It is so popular, in fact, that all the best legal NFL betting sites have Super Bowl futures odds posted as soon as the previous Super Bowl ends. In the summer, when the NFL is in its offseason, you can bet on Super Bowl futures for every single team in the league.

For example, if the New York Jets are pulling +10,000 odds to win the Super Bowl before the preseason even starts, the payout if they actually take the title is enormous. However, if the Jets have a great season and become a favorite in the waning weeks of their campaign, their Super Bowl futures odds will shrink considerably. Thus, to maximize your potential payouts, you’ll want to wager on futures as soon as possible when you see a number you like.

NFL Wager Types

NFL betting fans like it when sportsbooks have a good variety of wager types. Seasoned and professional bettors try out all sorts of different wagers, dabbling in everything from straight bets to difficult and complicated combo bets (aka parlays) that promise sky-high payouts. In this final section, we will give you some basic information about a few of the more popular wager types so you can fully understand how to gamble on football online.

Straight Bet: This is the most common type of bet and the easiest to understand. It is one single bet on either the moneyline, the point spread, or the over/under. It is pretty self-explanatory. Player and team props are also considered to be straight bets, as you’re wagering on only a single outcome.

Parlay Bet: This is a type of combo bet in which several wagers are combined into one big ticket. The bets included can be on the moneyline, the spread, or the over/under. The way parlays work is that all the individual wagers (aka “legs”) you make on the same parlay card have to win in order for the parlay to pay out. If you lose even one bet of the parlay, you lose the entire thing. Generally, the bigger the parlay, the bigger the potential payout.

Teaser Bet: This type of combo bet is similar to a parlay, only you are allowed to adjust the point spread so the odds are more in your favor. This gives you a better chance of winning, but it also comes with a lower payout. Regular teasers involve two bets and are sometimes called “two-team teasers,” while bigger teasers can feature several more legs and are called “big teasers” or “monster teasers.”

Pleaser Bet: Similar to a teaser or a parlay, a pleaser bet moves the line more in favor of the sportsbook rather than the bettor. This decreases your chances of winning, but if you do win, the payout will be much higher. Pleasers are generally for more experienced bettors who understand the ebb and flow of NFL games and matchups to a very specific degree.

Other Wager Types: There are a whole bunch of other wager types that you will find at most offshore sportsbooks when looking for how to gamble on NFL football online. These include round robins, if-bets, reverses, and all kinds of specific variations on each of these. Wager types can get pretty complicated, which is why we suggest checking your sportsbook of choice for details. Remember, if you’re just starting out, keeping things simple will keep more money in your pocket. Only call an audible when you’re ready to take over the game!