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Sports Betting 101: Point Spreads
A quick guide on "point spreads" for novice sports bettors. Sign up for the Yahoo Sportsbook today!
Video Transcript
- Welcome to the Yahoo Sportsbook powered by Bet MGM. Today we're going to explain point spreads. As most people know, in sports there are good teams and there are bad teams. The good teams are labeled as favorites and the bad teams are labeled as underdogs. If you had to put your money on one of these teams to win, there's no doubt you'd be betting on the favorite.
That's where point spreads come into play. The purpose of a point spread is to make a matchup as even as possible by taking away points from the favorite. Let's say Steph Curry and Shaquille O'Neal we're going to have a free throw contest by shooting 10 free throws. With Curry being a 90% free throw shooter and Shaq who's a 50% free throw shooter, there's no doubt Steph would be the favorite to win.
However, if we set the point spread at Steph Curry minus five, that would mean we're going to take away five points from Curry's final score. So if Steph makes his average of nine free throws, he really only gets credit for four. Shaq would then only need to make his average of five in order to win, possibly making the big man the better bet.
So keep that in mind when placing your bets. Just because a team might lose doesn't mean you can't win. And that's why we have point spreads.