The Basics Of Betting On Sports Futures

Serious sports bettors often dismiss futures wagers as sucker bets targeted at ‘squares’ looking for a big payoff. For example, a typical futures ‘sucker bet’ would be something like betting that Harvard will win the NCAA basketball tournament at 500/1 odds. Sure, the potential payback is huge but here’s the problem–the “true odds” of Harvard winning the NCAA hoops tournament are astronomical, and certainly well in excess of 500/1. That means that from the outset this bet represents a poor wagering value.

Even for the more pragmatic bettor, the inherent problems with futures wagers are readily apparent. You have to tie up your wagering capital for a long time. More significantly, once your bet is down you’re at the mercy of the countless interceding events that can influence the fortunes of a sports team. Its hard enough trying to weigh the significance of scheduling, injuries, personnel movement and so forth on a day to day basis. Controlling for all of these variables over an entire season is impossible.

So futures plays have no relevance to a serious approach to sports handicapping? Not necessarily. It’s crucial to think of the sports betting discipline in terms of value. Used properly, futures wagers are frequently a good way of maximizing line value and finding overlay situations. Here are some ways in which future wagers can be successfully leveraged.

The early bird gets the worm. The early bettor gets the value: Many sports books offer non-sports proposition bets, including entertainment based wagers like the Academy Awards. Someone who enjoys following the industry and keeping up-to-date on whats happening in Hollywood can get a decided edge over the bookmaker, who doesn’t have the time to stay juiced in to industry news and gossip.

With many books taking bets on awards like ‘Best Picture’ before nominations are even announced, a bettor has a great opportunity to find overlay situations. By staying on top of the entertainment news and accurately predicting which films will be nominated, its often possible to get substantially better prices than will be available after their announcement.

Making the Academy Awards an even better candidate for futures wagers is the nature of the film business itself. The release schedule for films is set well in advance, and after the year end cut off date no ‘surprise’ releases can sneak in to consideration. At this point, its relatively easy to narrow down the serious contenders and with some work to come up with a ‘short list’ of Oscar candidates.

It’s also possible to leverage value in the ‘stick and ball’ sports with future wagers. There are obviously more variables in sports than in the entertainment industry and the top teams are never going to be found ‘under the radar’. For example, you can already bet that the Patriots will win the 2010 Superbowl but you’ll be hard pressed to find a value price on such a popular team with the general public.

The place to find value in this sort of proposition is to look at the less obvious teams. A few years ago an associate of mine took positions on several teams NHL that started slowly, including the Calgary Flames at 40/1. By the end of the regular season they were down to prices as low as 5/1 or 6/1.

This play wasn’t based on any sort of certainty that this team would win the Stanley Cup, but rather on the value they presented. In other words, the true odds of this dark horse Cup win is more in the range of the current price so the 40/1 is a clear overlay. Once the playoffs begin, this sort of positional play offers a lot of options to hedge and to lock in a profit.

Also, don’t forget to consider ‘the field’. Many futures wagers lump a number of teams or competitors together as ‘the field’ and offer a single price to bet them all. Occasionally, the quick thinking handicapper can find unique value situations. For example, after Dale Earnhardt’s tragic death in 2001 some sportsbooks continued to offer a ‘field’ position on rookie of the year. A bettor who followed NASCAR closely would have quickly realized that Kevin Harvick–who replaced Earnhardt in his Richard Childress racing Chevy–qualified for the ‘rookie of the year’ award and could have bet the field at prices as high as 15/1. After he won his first race, the price for ‘the field’ dropped to 2/1 and by midseason ‘the field’ was a -250 favorite.

While this sort of situation is unique, there have been other situations where ‘the field’ presented good values. At one point, it wasn’t unusual to find a ‘field’ bet on NASCAR road races that included the road course specialists like Ron Fellows and Boris Said–meaning you could bet these ‘ringers’ and several others with one bet! Again, these opportunities don’t come around often but the value they present justifies paying close attention to them.

As a postscript, I want to emphasize the importance on shopping around any futures play for the best price. Shopping points is a smart thing to do on any wager, but the differences from book to book are frequently most extreme with futures plays. A little legwork can yield a substantially better price and the resulting better value.

Ross Everett is a widely published well known writer specializing in sports handicapping, auto racing, travel and fencing. He is a staff handicapper for Anatta Sports where he is in charge of providing daily free sports picks to a number of Internet and broadcast media outlets. He lives in Southern Nevada with three dogs and a wombat.