What is the Vig (Vigorish) in Sports Betting?

You’ve probably heard the term vig before, but what is vig when it comes to sports betting? The best way to explain it is to look at the other side of the gambling industry, casinos.

Casinos need to build the house edge in to their casino games, in order to cover overheads and make a profit too. Betting sites are exactly the same! They just call their house edge something different: vig.

Vig stands for vigorish and it’s a house edge that’s applied to all bets in order to ensure that the bookmaker makes enough money to cover their costs (and still make a profit). Let’s take a look at what vigorish is in a little more detail.

Vig Charged on Different Bet Types 

We’ve looked at the vig for point spread examples, but the vig varies (sometimes quite a lot) between the various different bet types. Here’s how the vig looks for some of the most common types of bet.

●    Spreads and Totals: The bettting vig on these types of bets is usually 4.77%
●    Alternate Lines: If you’re moving the lines in your favour then you can expect to pay more vig. If you move the lines to a harder position then you’ll pay less.
●    Moneylines: The vig is generally around 4 to 5% with these bets, but can very a lot between games and sportsbooks. It’s easy to shop around for lower vig here.
●    Parlays: The vig on parlays tends to be much higher than with other bet types. This is because each time you add a leg to the parlay, the house edge multiplies.
●    Prop Bets: Prop bets are another betting type where the vig is higher. Here it isn’t uncommon for sportsbooks to charge between 6 and 7%.
●    Futures: Futures odds tend to have much larger discrepancies between sportsbooks and generally ignoring the vig and focusing on finding the best odds is the best policy here.

What is the Standard Vig?  

Although there are no legal rules on what the sports betting vig should be, most sportsbooks tend to charge 5% or below.

The way that you’ll see this the most simply is when a sportsbook is charging odds of -110 on one team, they’ll usually charge odds of +110 on another. These exact odds amount to a house edge/vig of 4.77%.

That means you’ll need to win about 53% of the time to make a profit. If a sportsbook was offering odds of -112 and + 109 then they’re charging increased vig and you’ll be able to find better odds elsewhere.

What is Reduced Juice?

While 5% betting vig is enough for professional sports bettors to make a living, it only makes sense that we all want to find a sportsbook with lower vig. After all, vigorish only eats into our profits.

Some sportsbooks offer reduced juice lines, which are basically odds with a smaller house edge built in. This makes them much more popular.

An example of common reduced vig odds is:

Green Bay Packers -5.5 vs Sanfransisco 49ers (-105)
Sanfransisco 49ers +5.5 vs Miami Heat (-105)

You can see that the vig is reduced here, making the house edge just 2.46%. If you bet at odds like this instead of accepting the standard vig then your bets would only have to win 51.5% of the time to secure you a profit.