NFL moneyline betting explained

NFL moneyline betting online can be a profitable tool for any football bettor as it's the simplest of all NFL bets – just pick the winning team.

Quarterback Joe Burrow led the moneyline underdog Cincinnati Bengals in Superbowl LVI © Kareem Elgazzar/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK

Click the links to jump to each section.

• What do plus and minus odds mean?

• How to bet on the NFL moneyline

• Why bet the NFL moneyline vs the spread?

• Betting on favorites vs underdogs

• Handicapping NFL moneyline bets

• NFL moneyline FAQs

• Learn more about NFL betting

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When you bet the moneyline, you are betting on which team will win the game. Payouts will depend on both the size of the stake and the odds offered, and while the bettor should always bet an amount that they are comfortable to lose, the odds will depend on the quality of the two sides.

In Super Bowl LVI, the LA Rams faced the Cincinnati Bengals.

The Rams were considered the better team and most likely winner, more so because the game was coincidentally played at their home stadium and the moneyline reflected this.

Placing $10 on the favored Rams to win the game would return a total of $14.61 and of that $10 would be your original stake, making the successful bettor a profit of $4.61. A loss costs the bettor $10.

The same stake placed on the underdog Cincinnati Bengals would return $28.50 in total for a profit of $18.50 if the Bengals win, again at the risk of the bettor’s original $10 stake.

It is well worth drilling down into the meaning of the numbers in an NFL moneyline bet to get a feel for the likely returns and risks.

The American odds are preceded by either a - sign, a + sign or are priced at evens, often shown as +100. Evens means you make a profit that is equal to your stake. $10 at evens returns $10 profit and your original stake.

A negative sign tells you how much you need to stake to make a $100 profit. Hence you needed to stake $217 on the Rams in the example above to make $100 profit.

A positive prefix to the odds indicates the team is the underdog and the number tells you how much profit you would make for every $100 staked.

The moneyline odds also relate to the implied win probability for each side. The Rams’ -217 means in the bookmaker’s view, there is a 68.5% chance of a Rams win compared to a 35.1% chance of a Bengals victory.

The astute among you will have noticed that the probabilities of both outcomes (there are no ties in the Super Bowl) add up to 103.6% rather than 100%. This is due to the juice or margin charged by the bookmaker. They give themselves a safety net and the odds on both teams are slightly shorter than the true implied probability.

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The NFL bet that many will be familiar with is the spread bet.

This type of bet handicaps the stronger team, the money line favorite, by giving the underdog a set number of points’ headstart that is added onto the final score line at the end of the match too determine the winner for against the spread betting purposes.

The spread and the money line are strongly related. The bigger the chances of the favorite, the bigger the advantage will be given to their opponent.

There are pros and cons about which bet might be more attractive to the bettor. Spread bets attempt to make the contest more even and therefore the odds on each side will be closer to even money and to each other.

If you want to root for the better side, you won’t have to stake as much to win the same amount when betting against the spread rather than on the money line. But you will need them to “cover the spread”.

Alternatively, spread betting allows you to side with an underdog that you suspect may out-perform the quoted moneyline, but still come up slightly short in the outright game winning market.

Handicapping the money line may appear deceptively easy. All you need to do is select the winning team. However, if that were the case there would be no books and no wagers to be taken.

We’ve already seen that the money line odds are framed to fully reflect the chances of both sides, also shortening those payouts to add a small, but persistent amount of insurance for the books.

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Searching for factors that have been profitable in the past, may often be tenuous and disappear, but there is a myriad of performance based angles to explore to get an edge on the books by picking out under or over-valued teams.

Win/loss records decide the post season teams, but often a raft of narrow wins might make a team appear more dominant that their record merits. So, look at points differential as well as wins and losses to see if one is consistent with the other.

A matchup may be unattractive for one of the sides. A porous passing defense may be constantly exploited by an efficient and accurate quarterback or a very good running team facing a poor run defense may be able to dominate possession and dictate the course of the game.

Look at strength of schedules. Wins against low quality opposition may inflate a side’s current reputation and match ups between the offense and the defense may expose a deficiency that has laid hidden.

Injury news can shift the odds towards one side and weather, particularly wind can negate one side’s strength and empower a good running team.

Images courtesy of: © Kareem Elgazzar/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK, © Samantha Madar/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin / USA TODAY NETWORK, © Kareem Elgazzar/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK, © Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports, © Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports,