Vegas to bettors: Please quit taking the favorite and the over...

Well, that's an old post to bring up and attack.

I guess you don't understand the difference between college and pro football and the talent pools. But go look up how many lines of +17 or overs of +60 were posted in the NFL this season.

What an idiotic comparison.

 

Excuse me; I did not intend to "attack" your post. However, since you think I am an idiot, let me respond.

What you said was that Vegas would not do as much business if they set NFL lines at 17+ points or Totals at 60+ points. My response simply pointed out that Vegas does plenty of business with lines at that level in college football. I know that NFL games rarely have spreads at that level but I am not convinced by your logic that Vegas bookmakers would have to close down if they posted a few games with those numbers.

The Vegas sportsbooks are guaranteed to make money if any given game is "balanced" - approximately the same amount of money on each side of wager. Therefore, I would suspect that their greater motivation would be to find lines that achieve balance rather than lines that maximize the handle. If a certain game needs the spread at 18 points to achieve balance, my guess is that the line will go there even if it is set originally at some lower level.

The implication of your post is that oddsmakers will keep NFL lines low to attract a larger handle. Clearly that logic does not work in the extreme. Say there was a game last year between Jax and New England in Foxboro in December. Everything points to a Pats' win and the spread needs to be fairly large. Well, the sportsbooks could get a HUGE handle if they set the line favoring the Jaguars by 10 points. Tons of money would have poured into that line and very little of it would have been on the Jaguars. Balance is more important to the guys setting and then adjusting lines than is handle.

 

Ashton Kutcher, front man for the biggest sports betting syndicate in Vegas ...

http://linemakers.sportingnews.com/sport/2013-02-15/ashton-kutcher-sports-betting-esquire-las-vegas-syndicate

 

d_b