Since losing bets pay a premium (often called the “vigorish,” “vig,” or “juice” and typically equal 10%), the bookmakers will profit as long the money bet on the “over” is approximately equal to the amount of money bet on the “under” (bookmakers also sometimes “take a position,” that is, they will welcome unbalanced bets from the public if the bookmaker has strong feelings regarding the outcome of the wager ). The process works symmetrically for bets that the teams will score fewer than 40 points, or betting the “under.” The over/under line differs, of course, on individual games. If the teams score exactly 40 points, the wager is tied and no money changes hands. If the teams score under 40 points, the gambler loses the bet. Suppose further that a gambler wagers with the bookmaker that the actual points scored in the game will exceed 40, that is, he bets the “over.” If the teams then score more than 40 points, the gambler wins the wager. Suppose the over/under line for total points in a particular game is 40.

These results can be used by either bettors or bookmakers wanting to increase their odds of success in the gaming industry.īookmakers set over/under lines for virtually all NFL games. That is, we test to see if the variables we have collected and formulated are important in predicting the betting line for NFL games. We also estimate a single equation to predict the over/under line for individual games. Using this methodology, we find that several successful wagering strategies could have been applied to the 2010-2011 NFL season. All predictions in this paper are out-of-sample-meaning that all of the information necessary for the predictions was available before the games were played.

The sum of the predictions for the home and away teams computed from the regression equations (updated weekly) are then compared to the over/under line on individual NFL games in a wagering experiment to determine if a successful betting strategy can be identified. Separate regression equations are identified for predicting points for the home and away teams in individual games based on information known prior to the games. In this paper we attempt to predict the total points scored in National Football League (NFL) games for the 2010-2011 season.

Point spread on nfl games