Compare n' Bet™
Compare n' Bet™
Futures bets on championships, season awards, and tournament winners are a fun way to hold action on something for weeks or months. They also have the worst vig in the sportsbook catalog, which means you need to shop them carefully to find any real value.
A futures bet is a wager on an outcome that will be determined weeks or months from now. Common examples include:
In other countries, the equivalent bet type is called "outrights" (particularly for tournaments and league champions). The concept is the same: one bet, long payoff horizon, large payout if you hit.
Each possible outcome in a futures market has its own odds. If there are 32 NFL teams in a Super Bowl market, there will be 32 individual prices (some favorites at short odds, many long shots at big numbers).
The odds on all the possible outcomes, converted to implied probabilities, will always sum to more than 100%. The amount over 100% is the hold (or overround). This is the book's margin.
On standard bets like spreads and totals, the hold is usually 4-5%. On futures markets, the hold is often 20-40% or more. The bigger the field (32 NFL teams, 30 NBA teams, a full golf tournament field of 150), the bigger the overround tends to be.
This matters because futures are structurally high-hold bets. Even if your opinion on a team's championship chances is dead right, you're paying a large markup for the privilege of making the bet. The bar for finding value is therefore much higher than for standard bets.
The best time to bet futures is typically before the market fully forms. Preseason NFL Super Bowl prices in July or August often feature significant value on certain teams because the book is taking positions before public money has shaped the lines.
As the season progresses and more information is available (injuries, roster changes, performance trends), the lines sharpen. By late in the season, futures prices are usually close to the implied probability of each outcome. Early is where the edge lives.
Major injuries, trades, or coaching changes can dramatically shift futures prices. The lines don't always move efficiently right away. If a star player gets hurt, futures on his team might drop sharply, but other teams in the same conference might not get the corresponding price improvement they should.
Monitoring futures markets for under-reactions to significant news is one of the cleaner angles in futures betting.
Futures bets placed early can be hedged later for guaranteed profit if the team advances deep into the postseason. A $100 bet on a team at +2000 to win the World Series, if that team makes the finals, might be hedgeable such that you lock in a significant profit regardless of the final outcome.
The math on hedging is specific to each situation. Tools online can calculate optimal hedge amounts. For serious futures bettors, understanding hedging is essential.
A specific kind of futures bet: you bet on whether a team's regular season wins will be over or under a specific number. A typical NFL team might have a win total of 9.5, meaning over pays if they win 10 or more games, under pays if they win 9 or fewer.
Win totals are generally sharper than championship futures because the books have more data and the market has fewer long-shot exotic outcomes. Still, early-season win totals (in summer before the season starts) are often based on preseason projections that don't fully account for schedule difficulty, roster changes, or division dynamics.
A useful approach: compare the posted win total against your own schedule-adjusted projection. If you project a team to win 11 games and the book has them at 9.5, the over looks good. If you project 7 and the book has them at 9.5, the under looks good.
A team with a 9.5 win total playing a tough division and a hard cross-conference schedule is in a different spot than the same team playing a weak schedule. The market adjusts for this, but sometimes imperfectly, particularly early when the strength of opponents is still speculative.
Individual player awards like MVP, Rookie of the Year, Coach of the Year, Cy Young, etc. These markets have their own dynamics.
Awards are voted on by members of the media and leagues, who are influenced by narratives as much as statistics. A player putting up historic numbers on a losing team might lose the MVP vote to a slightly lesser player on a winning team because "value" gets defined differently.
Understanding narrative momentum is part of betting award futures well. A player getting regular coverage in the MVP conversation has an edge beyond his raw production. Knowing how voters think is a real handicapping skill.
Award prices shift dramatically as seasons progress. A player who starts the year at +2000 for MVP might drop to +250 if he's playing well and has narrative momentum. Timing matters. Early season positions on breakout candidates can pay big if they develop as expected.
For tournaments like the Masters, Wimbledon, or the World Cup, you bet on which player or team will win the entire event. The fields are usually large (100-plus golfers, 32 teams), and the prices reflect that.
A tournament outright market might have one favorite at +800, five contenders at +1200 to +2000, a tier of decent chances at +3000 to +6000, and a long tail of long shots at +8000+.
The combined hold on outright fields is usually the highest of any market. A golf tournament outright field might have 140% implied probability total, meaning 40% overround. That's a brutal margin.
Many tournaments offer top-3, top-5, top-10, or top-20 markets. These have lower prices but also lower vig and higher hit rates. For most bettors, top-finisher markets are better expected value than pure outright picks.
Some futures markets are connected. If a team wins their division, they're much more likely to win their conference, which means they're more likely to win the championship. Books adjust prices in each market to reflect these relationships, but the adjustments aren't always perfect.
Clever bettors can find value by combining or comparing related markets. If a team is +500 to win their division but +1200 to win the conference, you can ask: given their division-winning chances, does their conference price make sense? If the conference includes a clear superior team, maybe it does. If not, one of the two prices is off.
Because futures markets have the highest vig, line shopping has the largest dollar impact here of any bet type. The same team might be +800 on one book and +1200 on another to win the same championship. That's a 50% difference in payout on the same bet.
If you're going to bet futures, you absolutely must check multiple books. The opportunity cost of not shopping is enormous. No other bet type has this much price variance between books.
Compare n' Bet shows futures markets side by side across every supported book, which is where the real savings happen on long-term bets. A single futures bet you would have placed anyway can end up paying 30-50% more just by checking where the best price is.
Futures bets tie up capital for a long time. A bet placed in July on the Super Bowl doesn't resolve until February. That's seven months of money locked up.
For this reason, futures bets should typically be a small portion of your betting bankroll, not a large one. Even when you find a futures bet you love, putting more than a fraction of a percent of your bankroll on it is risky because of the long timeline and the high overall vig in the market.
A reasonable framework: keep all your outstanding futures positions combined under 5-10% of your bankroll at any given time. This lets you capitalize on early-season opportunities without overcommitting to outcomes that are months away.
Futures bets are fun because they give you something to root for over a long season. They're also high-vig, long-horizon bets that require careful price shopping to offer real value.
The best approach: bet futures early, on outcomes you have genuine reads on, after shopping prices across books. Keep the stakes modest. Treat them as a small portion of a diverse betting portfolio rather than as a primary strategy. The math just doesn't support making futures your main betting activity, but used thoughtfully they can add real value and a lot of entertainment to the season.
This guide is for informational purposes only. Compare n' Bet does not offer gambling advice or predictions. Please gamble responsibly.