What is "juice" in sports betting | How juice or "vig" works

A recreational bettor will often hear the term "juice" or "vig" without having nay idea what these terms refer to. In this short article we will explain the betting term "juice" which is sometimes referred to as "vig", short from vigorish, although the latter term is becoming less common. If you have bet on sports before, there is a good chance you have heard of "juice". The simplest way of explaining the term "juice" - the percentage of the bet which the sportsbook takes as profit. For newbie bettors this may not become clear until we discuss the sports betting term juice a little more and give an example.

Every sportsbook and bookmaker around the world is working for profit, this much we don't have to explain. But in order to make profit easier to achieve, the sportsbooks came out with the "juice", i.e. a small percentage of the wagers, which the sportsbook takes as a profit. When looking at the win-or-lose odds, for example, Boxer1 has odds -150 to win (favorite) and Boxer2 has +220 odds to win (underdog), the "juice" is not quite apparent, but instead already factored into the odds. However, if you know what is the over under bet, let's say the over/under bet on a basketball game is at 193 points. But if you look at such a bet, you will often see that the odds on both bets ( over and under) are listed as -110 (although sometimes they may be different). Keep in mind that the odds makers at the sportsbook will move the total points up or down and attempt to have equal number of bets on the Under and Over side of the wager. And you may already be asking "If they have equal number of bets on each side, how do the sportsbooks make money?". And here comes the "juice". As you see, each bet will pay out on -110, i.e. for every $110 bet you will win only $100. So the $10 difference is what the sportsbook makes for operating, i.e. the juice. And as you can see, for the bookmaker to make money from the game, the outcome of the game matters none, there will always be the "juice".

Published on 02/26/2009