A moneyline asks one question: who wins?
No spread, no handicap, no margin of victory. A moneyline pays out on the result alone, and the only thing separating the favorite from the underdog is the price attached to each side. This page explains how those prices are written, how to turn them into probabilities, and what changes from football to basketball to baseball.
What a moneyline bet is
A moneyline is a wager on which side wins the game outright. A one run baseball win and a fifteen run baseball win settle the ticket identically, and so do a field goal in football and a five touchdown blowout. Because both sides are rarely equally likely, the market balances itself with price instead of with a handicap: the favorite pays less than even money and the underdog pays more.
North American books write those prices in American odds. A minus number is the favorite and states the risk needed to win 100. A plus number is the underdog and states the profit a 100 stake would win. Nothing about the sign implies confidence beyond that, and the size of the number is what carries the information.
A worked example
Take a game priced at -150 on the home side and +130 on the road side. Backing the home team means risking 150 to win 100, so a 30 dollar stake returns 50 dollars in total. Backing the road team means a 30 dollar stake wins 39 dollars in profit and returns 69 dollars in total.
Those prices carry probabilities. A negative price converts by dividing the number by itself plus 100, so -150 is 150 divided by 250, which is 60 percent. A positive price converts by dividing 100 by the number plus 100, so +130 is 100 divided by 230, which is 43.5 percent. Add those together and you get 103.5 percent, which is more than every outcome in the game can possibly account for.
That extra 3.5 points is the sportsbook's margin. Rescaling the two numbers so they sum to 100 leaves a fair 58 percent and 42 percent, and those are the figures worth comparing a projection against. The no-vig calculator does that conversion for any two prices you enter.
Moneylines change character by sport
Football is scored in chunks of three and seven, so a great many games are decided by a margin that a spread can swallow but a moneyline cannot. Underdog moneylines in the NFL are popular precisely because a single late score flips the ticket.
Basketball produces the widest moneylines of the three. Two hundred possessions of scoring leave less room for an upset than a football game does, so a heavy NBA favorite can reach -1000 or beyond, where a small mistake in probability is expensive.
Baseball is a moneyline sport by convention. Run scoring is low and variable enough that a spread would be a blunt instrument, so books post a moneyline as the main market and offer the fixed 1.5 run line alongside it. MLB prices also swing on one input that football and basketball have no equivalent for, which is the announced starting pitcher.
Three things people get wrong
Treating heavy favorites as safe. A -400 favorite needs to win 80 percent of the time just to break even at that price. Being right four times out of five sounds comfortable until you notice that is exactly the standard the price demands.
Comparing prices by their raw distance. The gap from -110 to -130 is a much bigger change in probability than the gap from +400 to +380, even though the second looks larger written down. Convert to probability before deciding a move is meaningful.
Ignoring where the price came from. Different books post different numbers on the same game, and a few cents on every ticket compounds. Comparing the same moneyline across books on the odds board costs nothing and changes the break-even math on every wager.
Moneyline bets, answered
What is a moneyline bet?
A moneyline bet is a wager on which side wins the game outright, with no spread or handicap involved. The only thing that separates the favorite from the underdog is the price, so a moneyline ticket cashes on the result alone no matter how close or lopsided the final score is.
What does a minus sign mean in moneyline odds?
A minus price marks the favorite and tells you how much you have to risk to win 100. At -150 you risk 150 to win 100, so a 15 dollar stake returns 25 dollars in total, made up of 10 dollars of profit and your stake back.
What does a plus sign mean in moneyline odds?
A plus price marks the underdog and tells you what a 100 stake would win. At +130 a 100 stake wins 130 in profit and returns 230 in total. The larger the plus number, the less likely the market thinks that outcome is.
How do you convert moneyline odds to a probability?
For a negative price, divide the number by itself plus 100, so -150 becomes 150 divided by 250, or 60 percent. For a positive price, divide 100 by the number plus 100, so +130 becomes 100 divided by 230, or 43.5 percent. Those two figures add up to more than 100 percent because the sportsbook margin is still inside them.
Why do the two sides of a moneyline add up to more than 100 percent?
The extra is the sportsbook's margin, known as the vig or juice. Removing it rescales both numbers so they sum to exactly 100 percent, which is what gives you the market's fair probability for each side.
Is a moneyline better than a spread?
Neither is better in general, because they answer different questions. A moneyline only asks who wins, which suits sports where games are often decided by a single score. A spread asks by how much, which keeps a lopsided matchup close to an even price. Which one offers value on a given night depends entirely on the prices posted.
What happens to a moneyline if the game ends in a tie?
In sports that can end level, a book either offers a third draw option in a three way market or refunds the wager as a push in a two way market. MLB games are played to a winner, so a regular season baseball moneyline settles either way. Rules for suspended or shortened games differ by book, so the house rules are worth reading.
How does a three way moneyline work?
A three way moneyline splits a market into win, lose, and draw, and it usually settles at the end of regulation. Because the draw is priced separately, both team prices are longer than they would be in a two way market where the draw is folded into a refund.
See every moneyline side by side
The odds board compares moneyline prices across the books we track, and the projection boards put a model win probability next to each one so you can see where the two disagree.