OT-Innocent sports betting question.

[STEVEHOLT]

I dont endorse sports betting nor do I participate in it myself. However could someone more expert in this field explain to me why certain sports books simply dont move the line instead of altering the payout structure?

For example, tonight the San Fran Giants are -1.5 over the pirates, yet the sports books are offering greater than 1:1 winnings if they cover and they are offering less than 1:1 if the pirates do.

i would assume this is an attempt to coax more betters to the giants side because more money is on the pirates side now.

if thats the case, why not just move the line?

 

[Eric15]

I dont endorse sports betting nor do I participate in it myself. However could someone more expert in this field explain to me why certain sports books simply dont move the line instead of altering the payout structure?

For example, tonight the San Fran Giants are -1.5 over the pirates, yet the sports books are offering greater than 1:1 winnings if they cover and they are offering less than 1:1 if the pirates do.

i would assume this is an attempt to coax more betters to the giants side because more money is on the pirates side now.

if thats the case, why not just move the line?

I'm not sure why this is, but baseball spreads are always 1.5 runs, and then the payout is adjusted accordingly.

 

[Knicks411]

Yeah, baseball the line is always 1.5 runs and then they adjust the payout off that.
There are times in football where the line might be Denver -2.5 or whatever, and then you need to lay 130 to win 100, so much more than the normal 110 to win 100. Why that is I am not totally sure; my hunch would it be something like they don't want to move the line to Denver -3 or 3.5 because the book is taking a side that Denver is going to win and cover, so they figure by upping the payout for the other side they can get more money to the dog and still win if Denver takes it by a FG. But that's a guess

 

[Mano22]

I don't know about baseball, but in football changing the payout is a way of synthetically moving the line. This is sometimes done because lines must move at .5 points at a time, but sometimes the "fair" line might be like 1.2 not 1.5.

For example, most books take $110 to pay $100 on a bet. So if Seattle is favored by 7 over Green Bay, the line will likely start out at -110 for each team. But if more people start betting on Seattle, the line might technically stay at 7, but now Seattle could be -125, and Green Bay would be only 100. This sort of moves the line, without actually moving the 7 point line. Would you wanna bet $120 on Seattle to win $100 with a line of 7, or bet $110 to win $100 with a line of 7.5? It is very close. So betters have been enticed to change their bets (i.e. effectively had the line moved for them) without actually moving the line.