Many serious sports bettors consider the futures wager the province of rank amateurs trying to go for the big killing. They’re the sports betting equivalent of the wanna-be stock investor who always gripes if only I had bought Microsoft when they went public. They’re not the type who’ll do the work to grind out profits in the market, nor are they forward thinking enough to find the next big company to go public. They’d rather lay some money on a high priced dog and hope for the best, which seldom (if ever) occurs. Right now at some sportsbooks a $100 bet on the Cincinnati Bengals to win the 2010 Superbowl will pay back $10,000. The problem is that the true odds of Cincinnati winning the Superbowl are probably in the range of 50,000 to 1 which makes the +10000 you’re getting in this bet a bad value from the get-go.
Of more practical concern to the serious sports bettor is the necessity of tying up a portion of your wagering bankroll for a long period of time. Additionally, once you’ve placed a futures bet the outcome is still subject to the typical areas of concern for sports handicappers–injuries, trades, coaching changes, etc. It’s hard enough to stay on top of these variables on a day-to-day basis, and predicting them over the full season is downright impossible.
So why bet futures at all? More so than anything else, its essential to think of sports wagering not in terms of who wins or loses, but in terms of value. Properly utilized, future book wagers are often a great source of value. Below are some of the ways I like to use future wagers:
The early bird gets the worm. The early bettor gets the value: Many sports books offer non-sports proposition bets, including entertainment based wagers like the Academy Awards. Someone who enjoys following the industry and keeping up-to-date on whats happening in Hollywood can get a decided edge over the bookmaker, who doesn’t have the time to stay juiced in to industry news and gossip.
Every year some sportsbooks start to take action on the big Academy Awards categories like Best Picture and Best Director well before the actual nominations are released. If you can stay up-to-date on the buzz surrounding certain films you can get substantially better value than if you wait until after the nominations are released.
The nature of the film industry makes using a future wager in this manner very attractive. The release schedule of films is established in advance and is publicly known. The cut off date for award consideration is the end of the calendar year, so nothing can pop up and become a surprise after that. Of the hundreds of films that are released each year only a handful are legit Oscar contenders and with some work its easy to narrow those down further. After that its just a matter of finding the value.
Taking a position for profit: Now well turn our attention to sports and how to use the futures wager there. As I noted above, sports inherently presents more variables than the film industry. Furthermore, the top teams are usually not priced for value. Currently you can get +650 on New England to eventually win the 2010 Superbowl. The Patriots are certainly capable of winning, but the value just isn’t there.
To find value on this sort of wager you need to look for ‘dark horse’ candidates. For example, at midseason you could have bet on the Carolina Hurricanes to win the 2009 Stanley Cup at prices as high as 25/1 or 30/1. Now, they’re one of four teams remaining and are priced at 5/1 to 7/1 depending on the book.
This play wasn’t based on any sort of profound revelation that a team that underachieved early in the season would turn it around, but rather on the potential value they presented. In other words, the ‘true odds’ were far less than the number offered at the time the bet was placed. At these high prices, its possible to isolate a few potential ‘dark horse’ candidates and should any pan out they present a variety of opportunities to hedge and lock in profits.
“The field” can occasionally offer wagering value as well. A good example was the NASCAR Rookie of the Year futures in 2001. Some books offered a bet on ‘the field’ at prices as high as 15/1. After Dale Earnhardt’s tragic death, his team turned to rookie Kevin Harvick to fill ‘The Intimidator’s’ place in the driver’s seat. Someone who followed NASCAR closely knew this was going to happen well before it was publicly announced, and was able to grab a great price on Harvick as part of ‘the field’. By midseason, Harvick’s success had pushed prices on ‘the field’ down to the point that it was the favorite everywhere with prices in the range of -250 to -300.
While this sort of situation is unique, there have been other situations where ‘the field’ presented good values. At one point, it wasn’t unusual to find a ‘field’ bet on NASCAR road races that included the road course specialists like Ron Fellows and Boris Said–meaning you could bet these ‘ringers’ and several others with one bet! Again, these opportunities don’t come around often but the value they present justifies paying close attention to them.
Don’t forget to shop around for the best wagering value. This is true with any sports bet, but particularly so with futures wagers as the prices you find will vary much more than a typical pointspread. A little bit of effort can easily reveal a more advantageous price, meaning greater line value.
Ross Everett is a well known writer specializing in sports handicapping, horse racing, travel and fencing. He is a staff handicapper for Anatta Sports where he is in charge of providing daily free sports picks to a number of websites and broadcast media outlets. He lives in Southern Nevada with three Jack Russell Terriers and a wombat.