It basically goes without saying that football betting is a popular pastime around the world. Football betting websites do a lot of business related to football at all levels of play. College football (NCAA), professional football (NFL), and other minor leagues are prime candidates for real money online sports betting and responsible for large amounts of overall annual gambling. Basically, football dominates the gambling world both online and off.
Football fans can choose from a huge selection of wagers at football betting websites. Most betting sites offer everything from straight-up wagers on individual games to complex parlay bets. Some sports betting sites even facilitate office pools and betting leagues. In short, the options in football betting are nearly endless.
Best Football Betting Sites
Choosing A Football Betting Site
If you want to give real money football sports betting a try, you should know what to look for in a betting website. There are a few factors that we consider to be the most important for betting enthusiasts. The number one factor, not surprisingly, is safety. Online sports betting sites require trust, and that trust is earned by developing a track record for safety.
Safety is one of the primary reasons why we stick with big-name sports betting sites around here. There are many football betting sites to choose from, but many betting sites are not very well known. We prefer to stick with sports betting sites that have been around for a long time and have already served many real money customers.
After safety, we can look at other factors such as betting options, deposit methods, cashout times, and customer support. Each of these factors is important in its own right, but together they tell us what kind of experience we can expect from a betting site. With a quality football sportsbook to call home, you can focus your energy on making winning picks.
Most football betting websites offer signup bonuses to all new players. These bonuses tend to site in the 10% range. That means if you sign up and deposit $100, you will get an extra $10 to go along with it. This may not be a ton of money, but it’s still free money and it just might be enough to help you place one last winning bet.
Types of Football Bets
Online football betting consists of a pretty standard variety of bet types. The following bets are just a few examples of the most popular types of football bets. Depending on which sportsbook you wager at, there may be even more betting options than these.
Straight Bets
As the name suggests, a straight bet is a straight-up wager on which team will win the game. Oddsmakers use a point spread to even the betting action between lopsided matchups. For example, the sportsbook may stipulate that the stronger team must win by 6 points or more for bets on that team to be considered winners.
Moneyline Bets
Moneyline wagers are similar to straight wagers because you are betting on which football team will win an upcoming game. The difference is that money line football bets do not state that either team has to win by a certain number of points. Instead, money line wagers even the odds by stating people who wager on the stronger team have to risk more money than people who wager on the underdog team.
Totals
Totals are wagers in which the sportsbook picks a total number of points, and then you try to predict whether the combined score of both teams is greater than or less than that number. Most totals are even-money bets minus the juice (you lay $1.10 to win $1.00).
Props
Props are a little more random in nature. These are bets that can cover anything from which the team will score first to sing the National Anthem. Props can take many different forms, so it isn’t easy to give them an exact definition. If it’s a bet that doesn’t fit in any other category, it’s probably a prop bet.
Parlays
Football parlays are popular betting formats in which the bettor chooses the winners of multiple teams and combines it all into one bet. If every team in the parlay wins, the bettor receives a significantly larger payout than normal betting would have given. The downside is that if a single pick in the parlay is wrong, the entire parlay loses.
NFL Football Betting
The National Football League generates an astounding amount of betting action every year. Needless to say, online bookmakers make sure to offer a variety of wagers on every single game of the season. Every major football betting website on the internet offers football betting to some degree. Some bookmakers offer a more comprehensive betting selection than others, but they all make sue to offer real money NFL betting.
Finding an NFL betting site is a simple task, thanks to the popularity of football betting on the internet. However, it can be difficult to figure out which NFL betting sites can be considered “the best.” When looking for NFL betting websites, it is important to look for well-known sites in the betting world. Betting websites such as those listed here are known for being the most trusted names in the business.
After you have a betting site picked out, you can join it and start placing NFL football wagers right away. However, keep in mind that profitable NFL betting online consists of more than just making picks based on gut instinct. Take your time to look at the strengths and weaknesses of each team, consider that in combination with the spread and then look for wagers that show value. If you take your time, you might end up with a thicker wallet at the end of the NFL season.
College Football Betting Online
College football betting has become a popular alternative to professional football betting over the years. College football is often seen as more “pure” and more unpredictable due to the athletes being younger players who are still growing into their full potential. Thus, the lines are not always as spot-on as they are with professional football betting.
Additionally, there are many more college teams that sports bettors can follow and bet on every year. With 119 teams in the 1-A division alone, it is much easier to find profitable angles in college football betting. Plus, with so many games happening every week, the bookmakers don’t have enough time to get the lines and spreads just right for every game.
College football betting doesn’t just include betting on games, by the way. College football fans can also place wagers on who will win the Heisman Trophy, which team will win certain bowl games, and so on. The betting options for college football are limited only to the creativity of whichever sportsbook you call home.
Betting On Major Football Events
One of the fun things about American football is that every single game is a major event. With only one game for each team to look forward to each week, every game in the football season is significant. Every week is an important week in the NFL, so serious bettors are always ready to follow every game played by the teams they know best.
Having said that, there are a few events in every football season that take on even greater importance than normal mid-season games. The NFL playoffs and NCCA bowl games are always big sports betting events that create fanfare. College championship games and the NFL Super Bowl also naturally attract a great deal of betting.
One of the challenges to postseason football betting is finding favorable lines and spreads. Bookmakers are usually pretty spot-on with their postseason lines because they have fewer games to focus on. Plus, the strengths and weaknesses of every time are pretty well known by this point in the season. Even so, these difficulties do not deter sports fans from trying their luck on major football events.