Futures
A future is a bet on something that gets decided weeks or months from now: who wins the championship, who wins the division, how many games a team wins. The payouts are large and so is the book's cut. Your money is also gone until the season ends.
What you can bet
- To win it all. The championship, the conference, the division. Every team has a price, and one of them wins.
- Season win totals. An over/under on a team's wins. This is a two-way bet and reads like any total.
- Awards and season props. Most valuable player, leading scorer, rookie of the year.
- Other long-range markets. To make the playoffs, yes or no. Horse racing has futures on its biggest races too.
A price you keep
You bet $100 on a team at +800 to win the title. If it does, you win $800 and get your $100 back. If it doesn't, you lose the $100. There is nothing for finishing second.
At +800 the price implies an 11.1 percent chance, and a team at +2000 implies 4.8 percent. The sums are on the implied probability page.
Your price is locked when you bet, and that cuts both ways. If the team starts well and drops to +400, your ticket still says +800. If it loses its best player in the second week, your ticket still says +800 as well, and there is nothing to be done about that.
Adding up the board
On a point spread, two prices of -110 add up to 104.76 percent. The part over 100 is the book's cut, and you can see it at a glance. On a futures board there can be 30 prices instead of 2, and almost nobody adds them up, which is exactly why I'd make a habit of it.
A small example shows what the board hides. Say four teams are left and each has an equal chance. The fair price on each is +300, a 25 percent shot. The book lists all four at +250.
| Price | Implied chance | |
|---|---|---|
| Fair price, each team | +300 | 25.00% |
| The book's price, each team | +250 | 28.57% |
| All four at the book's price | 114.29% |
That board keeps 12.5 percent of the money bet into it, close to three times the cut on a straight bet. And +250 against +300 doesn't look like much when you are reading it.
Real boards with every team in a league on them are often heavier than that, and the fat is mostly on the long shots. A team that should be 200 to 1 gets listed at 100 to 1, people bet it because $10 wins $1,000, and the book is paying half the right price. I wouldn't touch a long shot on a board I hadn't added up, or at least the top ten prices of it.
Season win totals are the exception. Two sides, two prices, and a margin you can work out, so if I'm betting futures at all, that's where I start.
Money on ice
A future ties up your money. A $100 bet made in September on a title decided in February is $100 you can't bet with for five months. For a recreational player that hardly matters; for someone working a bankroll it does, because that money could have been bet many times over in the meantime. Most futures lose, too, so I'd keep them to a small share of the bankroll.
It also means you are trusting the book to be there, and paying, when the season ends. With a futures bet you are giving a book your money for half a year. I'd only do that with one I had no doubts about.
The rules that decide it
At most books all bets are action. A future stands whatever happens to the team or the player, so if your MVP pick is hurt in week three, the bet loses and is not refunded.
Win totals need the games played. Books usually require a team to complete its full schedule, or close to it, for a season win total to stand, and the exact figure is in the house rules. Awards are settled on the official announcement, and it's worth checking what the book says about ties and shared titles before you need to know (the time to read house rules is never after the ruling).
When I'd bet one
The best reason is an opinion the market doesn't share yet. Futures prices before a season are built on last year and on reputation, and if you think a team is much better than its price and you are right, you hold a number nobody can get later. A season-long sweat for a small stake is a fair purchase too, as long as you call it what it is.
Whatever the reason, shop it. Futures prices differ between books more than any game line does, and one book can have +800 where another has +1000 on the same team. On a bet you only make once, there is no excuse for taking the short one.
A good future also gives you a choice later on. If the team reaches the final, you can bet the other side and lock in a profit. How much to bet, and whether to bother, is on the hedging page.