It’s the cost of doing business and how sportsbooks keep the lights on.

The “vig” is an abbreviation of the word vigorish, which is what the bookmaker “charges” for accepting a wager. Sportsbooks or oddsmakers set the spread, while bettors evaluate the matchup in a process called “handicapping.” Professional bettors will even calculate their own spreads on games, then compare them with what sportsbooks have posted and attempt to find and exploit discrepancies. So if the Saints played their opponent on a neutral field? Points for home field advantage would not come into play. A team that plays well at home would normally have a maximum three points added in its favor to the spread, while a team that does not play well at home or overall would likely have a smaller adjustment to the spread in its favor. The New Orleans Saints’ raucous home at the Superdome is a notoriously difficult environment for visiting opponents. Additionally, home-field advantage is incorporated into a point spread, with the customary “adjustment” being anywhere from zero to three points, depending on the track record of a team’s performance at home. The amount of the spread can range widely from sport to sport and event to event. The point spread is the number of scoring units (i.e., points for basketball and football, runs for baseball, goals for hockey and soccer) representing the projected margin of victory for the favorite over the underdog. There are three components of a point spread wager: Taking the early example, if Oklahoma beats Kansas 51-21, a 30-point margin, Kansas would be a heavy loser but cover the spread. Where a moneyline bet involves picking one team to win outright (or a draw when offered as a potential outcome), the losing team in a point spread bet may still provide a win for bettors, depending on the score of the sporting event.

Alternatively, a “push,” when the game result falls exactly on the point spread margin - results in a “voided” or “canceled” bet and means that bettors get their original wagers returned.Ī point spread bet differs from a moneyline bet because the outcome of a spread bet, for bettors, does not always mirror the final result of the sporting event.That means a bet for $110 would win $100, or $11 would win $10, and so on. If bettors choose correctly and win, a sportsbook will pay the bettor in full amount based on the “price” of the wager, which is most commonly -110.

Gambling games what spread means