Moneyline
A bet on which team or player wins outright, with no point spread to worry about.
A moneyline bet is the simplest wager you will come across in sports betting. Forget about point spreads and totals here. You are just picking which team or player will win. If your pick wins, your bet pays out. If they lose, you lose your stake. The margin of victory does not matter at all, since the final score only counts toward deciding the winner.
Moneyline odds look a little different depending on whether your pick is the favorite or the underdog. In American odds, a favorite shows a negative number (like -150), telling you how much you need to wager to win $100. An underdog shows a positive number (like +130), telling you how much profit a $100 bet would bring back. The same idea carries over to decimal and fractional formats: lower odds mean favorites, higher odds mean underdogs.
Example
Say the New York Yankees are listed at -160 and the Boston Red Sox at +140 in a baseball game. If you place a $160 moneyline bet on the Yankees and they win, you get $100 in profit plus your $160 stake back. If instead you bet $100 on the Red Sox at +140 and they pull off the upset, you collect $140 in profit plus your original $100 stake.
The gap in payout between the two sides reflects how the bookmaker rates each team’s chance of winning, along with the built-in commission (known as the vig or juice).
Key Points
- Simplicity: Moneyline bets ask only one thing of you: pick the winner. No spreads, no totals, just the outright result.
- Payouts track probability: Favorites pay less relative to your stake because they are more likely to win. Underdogs pay more because they are less likely to win.
- Found in every major sport: Moneyline betting is offered across baseball, hockey, soccer, basketball, football, tennis, and just about any sport with a clear winner.
- No ties in most markets: Many moneyline markets leave out the chance of a draw. In sports where ties can happen (such as soccer), a three-way moneyline includes the draw as its own outcome.
- A building block for parlays: Moneyline picks are often stacked into parlay bets, where every selection has to win for the wager to pay out.