Juice / Vigorish (Vig)

Juice, also called vigorish or just the vig, is the commission a sportsbook builds in for taking your bet. You won’t see it spelled out as a separate fee on your slip. Instead, it’s woven straight into the odds, which is how the bookmaker makes money no matter which side comes through. The juice is the main engine behind a sportsbook’s profit and the reason it stays in business.

The most familiar example of juice shows up in standard point spread and totals betting, where both sides are priced at -110. At those odds, you have to risk $110 to win $100. If two bettors put equal money on opposite sides, the book takes in $220 in total stakes but only pays out $210 to the winner ($110 stake plus $100 profit). The leftover $10 — about 4.55% of the total handle — is the bookmaker’s margin.

In a perfectly efficient market with no juice, both sides of a 50/50 proposition would sit at +100 (even money). The gap between the odds actually on offer and those fair odds is the cost of placing the bet.

Example

A sportsbook offers a college basketball spread with Team A at -5.5 (-110) and Team B at +5.5 (-110). You bet $110 on Team A. If Team A covers, you win $100 in profit. If you lose, the book keeps your $110. Meanwhile, another bettor put $110 on Team B at the same odds. The sportsbook is holding $220 total and will pay $210 to whichever bettor wins, pocketing a $10 margin.

If that same market were priced at -105 on each side, you’d only need to wager $105 to win $100, meaning the vig is lower and the bet is cheaper for you.

Key Points

• Lower juice is better for bettors: Hunting down reduced-juice lines (like -105 instead of -110) saves you money over time and genuinely boosts your long-term profitability.
• Juice varies by market and sport: Mainstream markets like NFL spreads usually carry tighter juice than niche markets or prop bets, where the vig can run a lot higher.
• The vig is not the same as the hold: Juice is the margin on a single side, while the hold is the overall percentage the sportsbook keeps from everything wagered on a market.
• Implied probabilities reveal the vig: When you convert both sides of a market to implied probabilities and they add up to more than 100%, that excess is the total overround — the bookmaker’s combined margin across the market.