What Is a Futures Bet? How Futures Work, Pay and When to Hedge

Every August somebody you know puts $20 on a team at +2500 to win the Super Bowl and spends the next five months either bragging or pretending they never made the bet. That's a futures bet: a wager on something that won't be decided for weeks or months, like who wins the title, who takes MVP or how many games a team wins this season.

You place a future bet now, at today's price, and it isn't graded until the season or tournament ends. That long wait is the fun part and the catch.

How futures bets work

A sportsbook lists every possible winner of a market with a price next to each one. A preseason NFL championship market might look something like this:

You pick one and bet. If Team B wins the Super Bowl in February, your $10 pays $120 plus your $10 back. If anyone else wins, you lose the $10, and you'll often know that long before the final game. These are the same American odds you see on every game, so if you can read a moneyline, you can read futures prices too.

Most sportsbooks that offer futures keep them under their own tab, and the futures odds on the same team can differ a lot from one book to the next. Before you place a future bet, shop around for the best odds. A team at +1000 at one book and +1400 at another is the same bet with 40% more profit.

Your bet keeps the price you took. If Team B starts 9-1 and drops to +400, your ticket still pays at +1200. If their quarterback tears an ACL in Week 3 and they drift to +8000, you're still holding +1200 on a team that probably isn't winning anything.

Types of futures bets

Futures markets come in a few common flavors across the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, college sports, golf and soccer.

Championship futures

Championship bets are the most popular futures wagers: who wins the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the World Series, the Stanley Cup, the Premier League, or the national title in college football. Books also post conference and division winners, which pay less but come in more often.

Season win totals

An over/under on a team's regular-season wins, like over or under 9.5. You don't need them to win anything, just to beat the number. These are some of the most popular futures with bettors who like doing their homework, because they reward knowing a schedule and a roster rather than guessing one champion out of 30 or 32 teams.

Awards

MVP, Rookie of the Year, Coach of the Year, Cy Young. Award markets are driven by narrative as much as stats, so they move a lot on media buzz.

Player season stats

Who leads the league in passing yards or home runs, or a player's season total over or under a number. Some books call these season props, which is why people mix them up with prop bets on a single game.

Yes/no futures

Will a team make the playoffs? Will anyone go undefeated? Simple questions, often with a big price on one side.

When to place a future bet

Futures odds move throughout the season, so timing is half the game.

Preseason and early in the season is when prices are softest on teams the market hasn't caught up to. If you think a team is better than people think, the best odds you'll ever get are usually before they prove it. The flip side is that you're betting with the least information and the longest wait.

After injuries and trades, futures markets can overreact. A star missing six weeks of an 82-game NBA season might matter less to the title odds than the headline price swing suggests. Sometimes that's a buying spot.

Late in the season you'll get far worse prices on the favorites, but you'll know a lot more. Late futures on contenders are closer to a series of game bets packaged into one.

Why bettors like futures

The advantages of a future bet are easy to see. A small stake can return a big payout, you have a reason to care about every game of the season, and if you spot a team or player early, before the market does, you can lock in a price you'll never see again. A bettor who called a breakout season in August is holding a ticket worth a lot more than he paid for it by December.

The disadvantages of futures: vig and dead money

Futures markets usually carry a bigger house edge than game bets. On a game at -110 on both sides, the implied chances add up to about 104.8%. Add up the implied chances of every team in a championship market and you'll often get well over 100%, a lot more than that. The more teams in the market, the more room the book has to pad the prices. Our guide shows how to turn any price into a percentage so you can check it yourself. A +1200 price, for example, says about 7.7%.

Then there's the waiting. Money on a futures bet is tied up for months. That's $20 you can't use for anything else, and if your team is dead by November, you still won't get it back.

Here's where people get burned: they bet five or six long shots in August because each one "only" costs $10. That's $60 on a market where five of those tickets are guaranteed to lose. Pick one or two you believe in.

Hedging a futures bet

The best moment in futures betting is when a long shot makes it to the final and you get to decide what to do with a live ticket. Hedging means betting the other side to lock in a profit whatever happens.

Say you bet $20 on a team at +1000 and it reaches the championship game as the underdog. The other team is -180. If you bet $141.43 on the favorite at -180, you make about $58.57 either way:

• Your team wins: the future pays $200 profit, the hedge loses $141.43, you're up $58.57.
• The favorite wins: the hedge wins $78.57, the future loses $20, you're up $58.57.

You don't have to hedge the full amount. A partial hedge keeps some of the upside and still protects you if things go wrong. Some sportsbooks also offer a cash out on futures, but check what they're offering against what a hedge would give you. The cash out button rarely gives you the better deal.

Can you parlay futures?

Some books let you put futures bets in parlays, like two division winners on one ticket. The math works like any parlay, but since every leg is already a long shot with a fat margin, the edge you're giving up gets very large very fast. We'd skip it.

Futures bets vs. futures trading

Futures trading in the stock market is a different thing. A futures contract in finance is an agreement to buy or sell something like oil or the S&P 500 at a set price on a future date. Sports futures just borrow the name because the result is in the future.

Futures on Paid2Bet

We don't post futures on Paid2Bet. Our betting lines are game bets only: spreads, moneylines, totals, period lines and player props, all graded within hours of the final. We like it that way. You find out tonight whether you were right, not next February, and your free balance comes back to you right away instead of sitting on a long shot.

If you want to practice the thinking behind a future, like whether a team is better than the market says, try betting their games one at a time on the NFL game lines. You'll find out a lot faster whether your read is any good, and betting one game straight costs a lot less in vig than a title ticket.

You must be 21 or older to play. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.