Guide to Betting on NFL Futures and Regular Season Total Wins – The Athletic

The NFL season has arrived and with it comes a huge menu of sports betting options. This week we take a look at two of the most popular season-long bets. Here are some unique considerations when betting on regular season wins (RSW) and futures.

Manage your bank account

Sportsbook professionals love to have a large portion of their bankroll to play with each week – in fact, many of them use credit accounts to boost their utilization by more than 100% (one that I know once spent the football season betting several million dollars a week, even though he only had six characters to his name). While I wouldn’t recommend expanding yourself to that extent, unused money in your sports account is a missed opportunity; at the very least, you can put it into a low-risk investment instead.

On the other hand, one of the worst feelings a gambler can go through is finding a great betting opportunity but not having any money to take advantage of it. It’s hard to hit the right balance: you want most of your money to be played most of the time, but have enough left over to avoid FOMO gambling.

Betting on futures and winning the regular season gives you the worst of both worlds here: once you place a bet, you’ve effectively reduced the usable portion in his bankroll for the whole season, plus that money doesn’t fully “work” at any point except in rare cases like the Week 18 matchup to decide the top/under.

If you have a limited bankroll and futures bets are not settled for months, this can cause you to miss out on many profitable bets over the course of a season. In exchange for this opportunity cost, you need a higher expected ROI. I wouldn’t normally bet RSW with less than 10% expected return, or bet futures less than 20%. Your thresholds may vary.