As Ontario and perhaps other provinces look to open their markets to a host of sports betting providers, we wanted to write a short piece that explains betting odds to new players so that they can know if they are getting fair value.
As you research betting sites around the Internet, there is a lot of bad information & puffery out there. A lot of paid partnerships have been struck. These motivate sports content or "sportsbook review" sites to write that a particular one of their listed legal Ontario sports betting sites or Canadian betting sites (operated offshore) have the "best odds of any traditional or non-traditional sportsbook" or some such non-sense.
We want to show you how to see through the lies and puffery in order to understand how sportsbooks work and why they set and change their betting odds, so that you can get good value for your betting dollar.
A lot of people have a fundamental misunderstanding of the sports betting business and what a sportsbook does to earn money. In the end, the sportsbook or betting site is just a middle man between the players that are betting on all potential results for a given betting market on a given event.
The bookmaker sets the odds and lines with the goal of balancing their potential liabilities, so that no matter the outcome of the event, they will be left with a small amount of revenue. Once an event is complete, the bookmaker pays the winners from the stakes of those that lost their bets.
The odds margin that is built into the betting odds helps to ensure that the bookmaker can remain revenue-positive on the event. Odds margin is sometimes called the 'sportsbook hold'. High margins or a high hold inevitably result in lower odds for you the player. Lower odds mean lower payouts if you win.
Odds margin at a single betting site will actually vary across the hundreds of betting markets that are available within a given sporting event. In general, the lowest margins will be in use on the most popular betting markets. Since these are the high-volume betting markets, the sportsbooks can afford to integrate lower margins.
These markets are often the most visible ways that you may bet on any given event, like the point spread, the puckline, runline, moneyline (the winner of the event) or the over/under. As a rule of thumb, competitive odds margins on these markets run in the 5% region. For some sportsbooks and certain sports, you may find odds margins in the 3% to 4% range. See an example of how odds margin actually relates to the odds as associated to typical 2-way handicap betting markets at right, or below if viewed from your mobile.
If you visit a sportsbook that has been touted as having the "best odds" and you actually see a lot of games at 1.90/1.90 or -110/-110 or lower, you know that their puffery is just that - meaningless noise. Odds near 5% are bang-average in terms of reasonably competitive betting sites.
If you find yourself looking at odds of 1.87/1.87 or -113/-113 or worse on the bulk of NFL, NHL, NBA or MLB handicap markets and you want to get decent value, simply back away from that betting site. You can play at sites that offer far more competitive odds on 'the big four' leagues, which are the most popular by far for Canadian bettors.
On this page we talk about the sportsbook hold, or odds margin on a given betting market being 3%, 4%, 5%, 6%, 7% and even higher. When people talk about the difference between these figures as offered by competing sportsbook providers, readers can make the mistake of seeing negligible difference between the figures.
As you read this page, or various sportsbook review pages on our site that talk about the associated odds margins on offer, don't make the mistake of thinking that the difference between 4% and 6% margin is 2% and nearly meaningless. A bookie that keeps 6% margin is keeping 50% more than a bookie that only keeps 4% margin. Over time, this can end up being a big difference in your potential returns. If you care about getting good value, this is how you need to frame the relative value on offer - not by the one or two per cent difference that you might perceive as you read.
It depends on their approach to business. Depending on the jurisdiction, a given operator may have considerable marketing costs, whether as a result of advertising, team partnerships, or for other aspects of customer acquisition. Oftentimes, if a company has significant marketing costs, they use higher odds margins to help offset these costs. If a company has lower marketing and player acquisition costs, they may decide to offer odds that include a lower margin or "sportsbook hold", allowing players to get higher odds more often.
In the end the decision will be yours. Odds value is just one aspect of your overall experience, albeit an important one. There may be a lot of other aspects of a betting site or app that you may want to consider, like finding a betting platform that you really enjoy using - as there are some very poor platforms out there.
| Odds Example | Odds Margin |
| 1.92/1.92 | 4.17% |
| 1.90/1.90 | 5.26% |
| 1.87/1.87 | 6.95% |
| 1.85/1.85 | 8.11% |
Given that betting sites are constantly adjusting their odds and lines to account for their own particular liabilities, you will never find a single regulated or locally licensed betting site that constantly has 'the best odds'. So when you read on some third-party website that 'XYZ' sportsbook has 'the best odds', take it with a grain of salt - it's puffery. Or in other words, it is marketing-speak that is essentially understood as unprovable. Ignore it when it comes reading boasts about having 'the best odds'.
Any brand that boasts this likely has the exact same odds margins as most every other sportsbook: 5% to 6% on popular betting markets for top leagues, and higher odds margins (lower odds) for prop bets, less popular betting markets and for less popular leagues or events.
In the end, the only way to know that you are getting the best odds for a particular event or for a particular parlay ticket of selected bets is to use an odds comparison site in advance of your given events. Examples of these might include sites like OddsJet.com, which has Canada and Ontario versions, or perhaps a site like OddsPortal.com, which was a trail blazer in this arena, but is not focused on any particular geography. Note that many other odds comparison tools on the market are focused on the USA or UK, not Canada. So while you might find several sites in search results, they may not be most applicable for your local situation.
Let's use an NBA or NFL point spread betting market as an example to demonstrate what a bookmaker is really doing to earn revenue and provide its service. With a point spread market, as the odds on either potential result are often the exact same odds figure, it is a good example to demonstrate what the bookmaker is trying to achieve.
In reality, the sportsbook will usually adjust the point spread line itself, or shift the odds in order to encourage bets on one result and discourage bets on the other, as they continue to accept wagers and balance their liabilities up until game time. To keep things simple, we'll keep our example static, where the odds do not fluctuate in value.
Let's say that the total amount bet (or the handle) on this game's point spread market has been $2,000. This means that since the odds are equal on both potential outcomes, the bookmaker would have been aiming to have $1,000 in bets on the Home side and $1,000 in bets on the Visitor side.
Typical bookmaker odds on a simple point spread might be 1.90/1.90 or -110/-110. If this is the case, we know that the winners of the bet will be entitled to a return of their stake money, $1,000, plus the profit of $900 ($1,000 X 1.90) which equals $1,900. Of the $2,000 that was wagered in total, this leaves the sportsbook with $100 left as revenue.
$100 in revenue divided by a total handle of $2,000 is 1/20 or 5%. This 5% figure represents the fundamental amount of margin that most sportsbooks tend to integrate into their odds for the most popular betting markets for events within the most popular leagues (the odds margin). This odds margin is how sportsbooks earn revenue. Remember though, this is revenue, not profit.
The sports betting company has to pay their people, pay for equipment, servers, marketing (which may include things like costly Canadian sportsbook bonuses), office space, product testing and regulatory license fees. Then after all that is paid, they still need to share what's left with the government that licensed them. So that $100 or 5%, ends up shrinking to an even smaller amount. So when you hear about a given province having a 'handle' of billions of dollars, remember, this is just the amount of money that is flowing through the bookmaker as the 'middle man' that facilitates the bets. Assuming that there is a reasonable tax rate, the actual profit to the company on this 'handle' will only be a few per cent of that amount at most.