What are Boosted Odds?

If you enjoy betting on sports, you have probably been offered “boosted odds” by your favorite sportsbook over the last 18 months. During this period, boosted odds have become the most popular type of promotion with sportsbooks, as they have proved to be an excellent way to obtain and strengthen loyalty with bettors.

Boosted odds are a very simple idea – the sportsbook offers you a high potential payout on certain bets. The sportsbook will likely choose to offer boosted odds on a major forthcoming event such as the Super Bowl. By offering you boosted odds, the sportsbook is effectively giving you a discounted price by taking on some of the risk themselves.

Have you ever considered how a bookmaker comes up with the odds they offer on an event such as the Super Bowl? When the odds change, what is the reason for this change? And are boosted odds as great a deal as they seem? Let’s investigate sportsbook odds…

How do Betting Odds Work?

Different methods of expressing odds are used in different countries around the world. Fractional odds are popular in the United Kingdom for all sports and are also used worldwide for certain types of betting, such as horse racing. Fractional odds are written as a ratio, such as 10/1. This is pronounced “ten to one” and means you will receive ten times your bet, plus your stake back. Bet $100 at 10/1, and you will get $1100 back if your horse comes in.

That seems easy enough to understand, but other countries prefer to use different systems. Decimal odds are used throughout Australasia, Canada, Europe, Singapore, and many more. Decimal odds remove the complication of adding your stake back on at the end – our previous example of 10/1 would be written as 11.0 in the decimal system.

Finally, you have moneyline odds which is a system used almost exclusively by sportsbooks in the United States, such as Unibet IA. The American system does not tell you how much you will win relative to your original stake, but are instead calculated relative to a fixed price of $100. Some people think this system is the easiest to understand, whilst others complain that America always refuses to update their number systems!

Keeping with our previous example of a bet of 10/1 or 11.0, in the moneyline system this would be written as +1000. Just like the fractional system, this tells you that you will win $1,000 plus your $100 stake should you win. If you bet $50 instead of $100, you will only win $500.

How are these Odds Calculated?

Whichever system a sportsbook uses to represent their odds, do not be fooled into thinking that this is the sportsbooks genuine opinion that a particular outcome will take place. Even if you make your bet as soon as the sportsbook posts a particular bet on their website, they may have considered the odds being offered by their competitors on that same outcome before deciding what odds to offer themselves.

After the odds for a particular outcome have been posted, they will constantly be adjusted as customers place bets on each of the possible outcomes. For example, if the USA and England are in the final of the soccer world cup, the sportsbook will offer a price for each team to win the match. If lots of customers place bets on England, the price offered will be reduced, and the odds for the USA to win will be reduced accordingly. This can result in extreme situations, such as the one team ending up at +30,000 whilst the other is at -30,000. The sportsbook is not worried – anyone who has placed a bet on the seemingly unlikely outcome will be paid from the money people have paid to bet on the favorite to win. The odds are always balanced perfectly, such that the sportsbook knows they will earn a profit, whichever team ends up winning the game.

Back to Boosted Odds…

Promotions offering boosted odds can seem like a great deal for the customer, but sometimes the sportsbook will use these enhanced odds when calculating the price to offer on alternative outcomes. Think about it this way – the sportsbook is offering you a higher payout if you win, despite the chances of you winning remaining the same.

Boosted Odds promotions will sometimes give you an additional 10% to 40% in profits if you win. New player boosted odds promotions of up to 100% are common, though you can only use such a bet once when you sign up to a particular sportsbook. You may also be limited in how much you can bet if the sportsbook is offering drastically increased odds – wagers might be limited to as little as $100 if the risk to the sportsbook is considerable.

We previously mentioned an example of one team being offered at +30,000 whilst the other was priced at -30,000. In reality, such prices would never be offered as there is no implied profit for the sportsbook if the odds match exactly. Let’s look at a real-world example of boosted odds:

Underdog	Favorite	Implied Probability	Overround	Vig %
Florida State (+105)	Clemson (-110)	101.16%	1.16%	1.15%
Central Michigan (+165)	Eastern Michigan (-200)	104.41%	4.41%	4.22%

The first line of the table shows a boosted odds promotion for a basketball game between Florida and Clemson. Although your odds have been boosted for whichever outcome you choose, we can see from this example that the sportsbook will still make a profit of just over 1% when you make these bets.

The second line shows a regular, unboosted game offered by the same sportsbook on the same day. The difference between probabilities is easy to see – in the first game, one team is offered at +105 whilst the other is at -110. The second game shows a much bigger gap – +165 vs -200. With a little math, you can calculate the other values shown in the table, although that is outside the scope of this article.

What this table shows is that you should always consider the opposite outcome to the one you are betting on, even if you are being offered boosted odds. Sportsbooks are no different to the blackjack or roulette tables in your local casino – the sportsbook will always make a profit, whatever comes to pass. There is nothing wrong with this – they are a business, after all. At the same time, you should always try and make your bets on games where this “overround” is as low as possible, just as you would look for the slots or video poker machines which offer the highest payout percentage or RTP.

In this respect, boosted odds are almost always a good deal – the sportsbook will still make money from your bet, but they will usually make much less than they would on a game without boosted odds. And let’s be honest – the only thing better than seeing your favorite team win a game is cashing in a ticket for a huge payout afterwards.

Good luck with your sports bets!