Throughout history, sports and gambling have gone hand in hand. It’s why so many people are drawn to the idea of betting on their favorite teams and athletes. Sports betting began gaining traction in the 19th century, first through horse racing and later with baseball. But scandals involving fixed games and match-fixing would eventually dampen sports betting’s popularity, not the least of which was the 1919 World Series game-fixing incident.
The most basic type of sports wager is a moneyline bet. You place this bet by choosing a team and its corresponding odds number, which will usually be positive or negative. A bet on the winning team will yield a full payout of your $100 wager plus any additional winnings, depending on the amount you risked.
More complicated bets are spread bets, also known as point spreads. This is where a team is favored to win a game against another, and the oddsmakers will assign a “point spread” in order to balance the action. The spread number represents how many points the favored team must win by (given the number of points scored in the game) for you to be able to make a profit with your wager.
Totals bets, also known as over/under bets, are similar to point spreads but instead of predicting whether one team will win a game, you’re predicting if the two teams will combine for more (over) or less (under) than the total posted by the oddsmakers. You can bet on a game’s total at most online and brick-and-mortar sportsbooks.