According to the American Gaming Association, over 150 billion dollars are wagered on sports games every year. This is pretty crazy considering the fact that sports betting is only legal in some states.

Why does sports betting have such a high appeal? Well, for most casual bettors, putting a wager on a game adds stakes and excitement to an already exciting game or to games you wouldn’t watch otherwise.

If you want to join in on the fun, we’ll show you how to read betting odds so that you can make an informed prediction.

How to Read Betting Odds

The anatomy of a betting line for most sports is composed of three parts: The spread, the money line, and the over/under line. These are the three types of bets you can make on the majority of sporting events. We’ll explain more below.

The Spread

The spread tends to be the most popular betting line to pick when wagering on a sports game, as it is generally more forgiving if you’re picking an underdog to win. This is because, with the spread, you are either betting that the favorite going into the matchup will win by a certain amount of points or that the underdog will win (or lose) by a certain amount of points.

Here’s a hypothetical example from the upcoming Super Bowl matchup:

New England Patriots: -115 (-2)

Los Angeles Rams: +300 (+2)

Let’s go through what these numbers mean.

The -115 and +300 are the “odds” each team will win, and reflects how much money you’d receive from placing a hypothetical $100 wager. For the Pats, because they’re the favorite, you’d actually only win $85 for placing a $100 bet. That’s what the negative sign implies.

But for the Rams, you’d win $300 for placing a $100 wager because they’re the underdogs. If you’re ever confused about how much you’ll win for a wager, you can use a win loss calculator.

Lastly, the +2 and -2 show how much each team is expected to win or lose by. So in order for your wager to be successful for the Pats, they need to 1. win and 2. win by more than 2 points. For your wager on the Rams to be successful, they either have to win outright (by any point margin) or lose by less than 2 points.

The Money Line

The less complicated betting line is the money line, which just displays the odds for each team. So the money line for the example above would just be this:

New England Patriots: -115

Los Angeles Rams: +300

Over/Under

Alternatively, you can bet on whether the total points scored in a game by both teams combined will be over or under a certain number. For this Pats-Rams game, the line might look like this:

OV: 58 (-105)

UN: 58 (-115)

In this scenario, the bookie is suggesting that either outcome is almost equally likely. So using what we’ve taught you above, you can see that neither wager pays out particularly well.

Want More Useful Life Tips?

Whether or not you’re actually deciding to get into sports betting, knowing how to read betting odds is a useful skill to have. Like drinking, it’s a valuable social asset in certain situations.

If you’d like to learn some more valuable life skills, be sure to check out the Useful Tips section of our site!