NFL Betting Trends 2024: Favorites Failing to Cover

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00:00All right, making a dent in sports betting has been difficult for some people, Sam.

00:07If you're taking the favorites in the NFL, you're getting crushed.

00:11And if you're taking overs, you're probably even doing worse.

00:13So the totals are right now, a lot of them in the NFL are well under 40 for September,

00:19which is highly unusual.

00:20And any team that's six or seven point underdogs pretty much, Sam, in the NFL, I mean, they're

00:26almost all winning and winning outright.

00:28So this has been a crazy season for the odds makers.

00:31And that's why I think a lot of these lines, as you see this week, are three and four and

00:35close.

00:36Yeah, it's kind of been the same story over the last few weeks.

00:40You have these big favorites of minus five and a half or more are now two and 14 to start

00:46the season against the spread, including losing 10 outright games.

00:51You have the Bengals, the 49ers, the Bucs, the Raiders, all had over 70% of the public

00:56bets this week.

00:58Each lost outright, which obviously knocks out a bunch of survivor pools.

01:02But even more notable, bettors often add favorites to parlays or teasers, tease it down.

01:09So you're not doing the actual spread, you're just taking them to win outright.

01:12And sports books are really cleaning up on those as well.

01:14They're holding about 21% on spreads to start the season, which is just insane, considering

01:20the average is usually about 7.5%.

01:24And even more notable, when you account for parlays, sports books are holding 16% across

01:29all sorts of NFL bets and yet scoring is down.

01:31We thought to start the season, oddsmakers theorized that perhaps with the new kickoff

01:36rules, teams were going to be scoring more, it would be closer to the end zones.

01:39But teams are just averaging 21 points per game through the first four weeks, which is

01:45the fifth straight year of scoring going down and the lowest start since 2006.

01:49So yeah, the public loves to bet overs and is not doing a great job right now.

01:54Unders are hitting at about a 58% rate this year.

01:57So between all of the upsets, between the favorites losing outright and between the

02:01low scoring, again, sports books are really cleaning up and we'll have to see if that

02:05changes.

02:06There's only a couple big favorites this week.

02:09We'll see if those lines go down a bit as people start to look into this stuff, as the

02:13trends start to go out on social media.

02:16But it'll also be really interesting to see what happens, what the sports books do with

02:20the money.

02:21Some analysts think the high margin start is going to result in sports books, you know,

02:26reinvesting that in promos, marketing and trying to get people to bet more and more.

02:30They've actually spent $23 million on linear TV ads this year, which is down 15% from last

02:36year.

02:37So they're saving money in that department while betting in general is going up.

02:41I think it's up about 16% in terms of handle this year, which obviously accounts for some

02:46new states as well.

02:47And viewership is up as well.

02:48So it's a really, really just a great mix all around for sports books to start the year.

02:53But obviously it's a very long season.

02:55We'll have to see what happens.

02:57Every stock is pretty much up right now and getting an outperform rating.

03:00But historically, that's kind of dipped as we go into November.

03:03So it'll be interesting to see how they react and what they do to prepare going forward.

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