Fair Bet

Sports Betting: Future Betting Explained

There are many types of sports betting. One of the most attractive of these is future betting. Future bets or futures for short are wagers made before the start of a tournament or season. Say you're betting on the NFL. You bet on a team to win Super Bowl even before the first game of the season is played.

What makes this betting type so exciting is that the odds change as the event approaches. Rather like the stock market, sports betting odds respond to pre-season rumors and team movements. Yet while the odds change, your bet gets stuck with the prevailing odds at the time of your bet. That means if you bet at a time when the odds are greater, and you win, you gain more than another punter who makes the same bet when the odds are lower.

Future bets can be made for both team and individual sports. You can wager on Venus Williams to win this year's US Open months ahead of the tournament with odds of, say, 8 to 1. If Williams plays in a tune-up event and loses in straight sets, the odds may rise to 15 to 1. On the other hand, if she wins and seems to be on a roll, the odds may change to 4 to 1 or lower as the fourth Grand Slam draws closer. In either case, your bet stays at 8 to 1. Future betting on non-team sports is known as proposition betting or prop betting.

With team sports, you should know that you can bet on regional or conference finals as well as national (like in the NBA). Moreover, whether it's team or non-team, future betting can only be made for a selection to win. You cannot pick a selection to lose.

In future betting, the sports gambler will mostly rely on pre-season dynamics to guide them. For example, basketball teams engage in draft-picking before the start of a plying season. Usually in basketball, the cellar-dwelling teams get first choices in drafts. One juicy pick alone can drastically change a team's odds of winning. Other happenings like trading, free agents, change of coaches, and management takeovers must be closely observed as well.

Above all, TIMING is everything. You have to know in your gut when to freeze that bet. Listen to your inner voice more than to the oddsmakers.

But no matter how analytical the sports bettor is, there is always an element of the unexpected there. Never forget about the wildcard or longshot entry, as in the case of Boris Becker who stunned the world when he won Wimbledon at age 17 and defended it the next year. Future betting lets you stake a little money on dark horses like that for a potentially huge return. This is what makes it an attractive spoors betting type.