Sportsbooks do an excellent job of providing a litany of betting options for its users across a variety of sports. However, one market that seems to go under the radar is ‘winning margin’. This guide will detail everything you need to know about th๊e bet type, and how you can make a profit off the back of this knowledge.
Winning Margin Bet Explained
A winning ma⛦rgin bet is a type of single bet in which you’re attempting to predict how many points/goals the winning team will win by.
US sportsbooks offer various winning margin markets, with the high-scoring ﷺnature of the country’s most popular spor💝ts — football and basketball — facilitating some margin of error.
Instead of havi🅰ng you predict the exact margin of victory, sportsbooks 𒀰will provide a point range (or band).
How Do I Place a Winning Margin Bet?
Winning margin markets are typically offered for an array of sports, including basketball. In the step-by-step guide below, we explain how to place a winning margin NBA bꦕet with FanDuel:
Log in to your FanDuel account🌱 by accessing the blue ‘Log In’ icon located in the top right-hand corner of the homepage. Create🌸 an account via the green icon alongside it if you need to.
FanDuel’s popular markets are prominent on their homepage. A scroll down showed upcoming NBA eve💯nts.
(Source: FanDuel) ♑ FanDuel’s NBA coverage is shown below. We opted to place a bet on the Miami Heat @ Philadelphia 76ers game.
(Source: FanDuel) 𝓀 To access all the game’s꧒ markets, we clicked ‘More Wagers’.
There are a multitude of diff🥃erent markets available oᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚn this game, so we had to use to horizontal slider to find FanDuel’s ‘Margin’ markets — shown below.
(Source: FanDuel) We opted to place a ‘Margin of Victory’ bet, deciding tꦆo back the Heat to win by 1-5 points. There were 12 different margins available in this sub-market.
(Source: FanDuel) Here is the wager in our bet slip. Enter your stake and click the ‘Place Bets’ icon to conclude the winning margin betting pr🏅ocess.
(Source: FanDuel)
Best Betting Sites for Winning Margin Bet
The winning margin market may not necessarily be the most prominent, but the US’ leading sportsbooks will offer this bet type for a multitude of popular sports. Here are the best sportsbooks for winning margin be💜tting:
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Examples of Winning Margin Bet
There are various winning margin bets you can place with your favourite sportsbook.✨ Here’s a rundown of the options typically available to you:
Winning Margin by 2
‘By 2’ indicates a p🍸recise prediction where you’re betting on the winning team to win by a ꦗmargin of two points/goals.
As a result, such markets are typically provided for lower-scoring sp🍰orts🌞 such as soccer, ice hockey, and baseball. It’d be very tough to back exact margin of victories for football or basketball games given how many points are scored.
If you bet on Bayern Munich to beat Real Madrid in their Champions League semi-final match-up ‘by 2’, you’ll need Bayern to win by 🐻two goals – 2-0, 3-1, 4-2, etc. Anything but a winning margin of two will mean your wager loses.
Winning Margin 4 Way
Winning ma🀅rgin 4-way simply means that you have four outcomes to choose from when pr🅘edicting the final score. There are four point bands, if you will.
ꩵ For example, in an NBA matchup between the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat, bookies could provide these winning margin 4-way markets:
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Boston Celtics 1-10
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Miami Heat 1-10
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Boston Celtics 11+
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Miami Heat 11+
In short, you can bet on both teams to win by one to ten points, or b🥂y over 11 points.
Winning Margin 3 Way
3-way winning margin betting limits the punter somewhat, with the bigg💎er point ranges lowering the odds in some instances.
The bookmaker will provide three different margin options for a match. DraftKings, for example, provide🔯s markets on either team to win by X number of points or more, as well a🍌s either team to win by fewer than X points.
Winning Margin 1-5
With this winning margin bet, you’re betting on the team to win by at least a point, but no more than five. If the point difference at the end of the game lands between this point range, you’ve🌄 got yourself a winning bet!
For ✱instance, if you bet on the Celtics to beat the Heat by 1-5 points, a 110-107 victory would be a winner, but a 110-99 win would be a losing bet.
Winning Margin 12 Way
This is the same premise as the 4-way win♎ning margin markets. With 12-way, though, 12 different point ranges are provided, offering punters even greater specificity and greater odds as a result.
In the example above, DraftKings’ is providing six different winning margin ranges for each tea🐲m, starting out at༺ 1-5 and working up to 26+.
Strategies for Winning Margin Betting
Here are ꦏfour ways you can stand yourself in the best possible stead when placing winning margin bets:
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Check stats: This is fairly obvious, but a qꦯuick check of a team’s attacking and defensive stats can help you gauge the margin of victory. Teams that defend well are typically going to be involved in closer🔴 matches, while those that attack proficiently are more likely to enjoy bigger margins of victory when they do win. You can also check a team’s average margin of victory or defeat.
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Head-to-head matchups: Histor💯y matters, right? While teams tend to chang𝕴e and evolve rather quickly, recent matchups between two teams can help you gauge the nature of an upcoming bout. Are they tightly fought affairs, or does one team run away with it?
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Check player injuries: News regarding player injuries and statuses is easily found nowadays thanks to the growing intertwining of sports and social media. ༺Use these updates to your advantage in the betting world. A player missing a particular game could have huge ramifications when placing a winning margin bet. The Miami Dolphins are less likely to blow a team out if Tyreek Hill’s injured, while Bayern Munich are more susceptible to defeats on the big occasion without star goalkeeper Manuel Neuer.
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Understand the game: While we're not saying you need to improve your knowledge of the sport, it’s important t🅠o understand the context of the game in question. There are going to be occasions whe𝄹n the fixture means more to one team than it does to another, especially towards the backend of the season, when teams are vying for playoff positioning or places in European competitions (in soccer). You might want to check out goal difference stats when placing soccer winning margin bets, as there might be times when a team needs to run up the score to move up a position in the standings.
Pros & Cons of Winning Margin
Let's now have a look 🧸at some of the advantages and drawbacks that come with winni𝕴ng margin betting:
- Allows for some margin of error when predicting the final score of a match
- These types of bets can provide bigger margins
- Useful for accumulator betting — bigger odds
- Sportsbooks provide an array of different winning margin markets and thus, point ranges
- It's particularly difficult to predict winning margin for high-scoring sports
- Research required to master winning margin betting
ThePuntersPage Final Say
We believe that winning margin betting is💃 an avenue that any av🔥id sports bettor should explore. Leading bookie are providing an array of different winning margin options on a variety of sports and, if you do your research, there’s certainly an opportunity for you to profit more with this market compared to mere match result betting.
FAQs
When placing a winning margin bet, you’re betting on the number of points/goals t⛦he winning team will win by.
This t😼ype of winning margin bet provides four different point ranges for the game — two for each ꧑team. 1-10 and 11+, for instance.
Football winning margin betting involves backing a team to win by a certain number of points. Sport🧔sbooks will provide various point ranges for each match, and you must choose which range — as well as the winning team — the winning margin will lie.
It’s the same concept for every sport. With basketball, you’re betting on the margin of victory. Given the high-scoring nature of the sport, sportsbooks will supply a range of different winning margin markets as well as point raᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚnges, which is up to 12.
A winning margᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚin band are the points between the winning and losing team. There are various bands for each match and are displayed like this: 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, etc.