What is a Futures Bet in Sports Betting?

A futures bet is a bet made that will be finished at some point in the future (not within the next few days), often at the end of a season. The purpose of futures bets are often to bet on a team or player's overall success or failure without having to pick exactly what is going to happen game by game. These bets are a bit less common because you are storing money away for a bit of time, but a lot of futures will have long odds depending on the bet itself.

Examples of Futures Bets

There are plenty of futures bets that exist in many different ways. They have drawbacks and benefits, especially if you do have the bankroll and patience to keep up with the futures markets. They are also often not quite as sharp as an everyday line.

Why is this the case? They just don't get as much action because people are less likely to bet $10000 on a 6-month bet than they are on a bet that they will get back tomorrow if they win. The lack of interest in futures from an overall money standpoint means a lack of effort from the books relative to a regular NFL season spread.

Award Odds

One common way to bet futures is to bet award odds in major sports, and it is always fun because you often can get long odds due to a large number of options. For example, last season, you could get Nikola Jokic anywhere from 20-50 to 1, meaning that you could've 50x'd your money betting on a pretty clear number 1 option with the ability to contribute in every category. My point is, while Jokic wasn't a favorite by any means, he was not some unimaginable pick at very, very nice odds.

One future I like to bet is Heisman odds before the season, especially if you can identify young breakouts from talented players before anyone has seen it yet. You can also bet these throughout the season, but the odds change pretty fast, and deep into the season, you won't get nearly as good odds on the potential candidates.

Championship Odds

You can often bet on a team's ability to make the playoffs or win a division, conference, or championship. These odds vary significantly depending on what exactly you are betting. But you can find longshots, especially in more volatile sports like baseball or hockey, where champions often come from the middle of the pack.

Football and basketball are usually relatively top-heavy, but that doesn't mean you cannot find good bets even when you are laying worse odds. Obviously, things like NFL division odds, where there are just four teams available to bet on, you likely won't get long odds that 20x your bet.

Totals Betting

You can also often find key player props and team props before the season starts. Finding anything but team win props throughout the season is almost impossible, so the preseason is often when to be on the lookout for these. You should be able to find things like yards props for key football players and points props for NBA players.

Along with these, you should find props on the total wins of each team in any league. These can be a really fun exercise to run through before the year and sprinkle some bets just to get yourself familiarized with the schedule and your expectations of each team.

Futures are mainly saved for overarching awards like sixth man of the year, MVP, Finals MVP and awards of the like. An example of this would the Columbus Blue Jackets are +17500 to win the NHL Stanley Cup, which means your payout would be +17500 on top of your $100 bet. You can find other ways to bet in our training camp by clicking here !