Week 1 features fewest road favorites of Super Bowl era
Everything that happens in sports has some additional context when viewed from a sports betting perspective. From season-changing injuries to record-setting moments and so much more, the sports news cycle will constantly and significantly affect the sports betting industry.
Our betting buzz file, with contributions from David Purdum, Doug Greenberg and others, aims to provide fans with a look at the sports betting stories that are driving the conversation.
Key links: Sports betting home | NFL odds page | College football odds page | ESPN BET
Sept. 5: Tennessee sees dramatic line move up to 10-point favorite
Pamela Maldonado: In one of the most dramatic line moves for Week 2 of the college football season, early sharp money on the No. 15 Tennessee Volunteers caused an initial move from 4.5 to 7.5. On Thursday, continued betting pushed it even further to 10 ahead of their matchup with the No. 24 NC State Wolfpack.
Tennessee had a dominant 69-3 win over Chattanooga in its season opener. It was an impressive Week 1 performance that has bettors leading to wager on the Vols.
Meanwhile, NC State had an underwhelming opener, struggling more than expected against Western Carolina and needing 21 unanswered fourth-quarter points to seal a 38-21 win as a 32-point favorite.
This relatively poor performance against an FCS opponent might have caused bettors to lose confidence in NC State.
Value is with the Wolfpack. Credit is not being given to NC State quarterback Grayson McCall, who could gradually improve after returning from injury. McCall suffered a concussion last October with former team Coastal Carolina and missed the remainder of the 2023 season.
McCall mentioned that he had some nerves in his NC State debut, and acknowledged that the team didn’t play its best, but said he was happy the Pack came away with the win. He also noted that it took some time to settle in, as it had been 313 days since his last competitive college football game. The line jumping out to 10 could be quite the overreaction.
See every top-25 college football game line here, and more betting tips in Week 2.
Sept. 5: Week 1 features fewest road favorites of Super Bowl era
Week 1 of the NFL is generally marked by parity when it comes to betting. While the football teams are feeling each other out on the field, bettors and bookmakers are doing the same off of it, often leading to tight betting lines.
The long opening weekend of NFL action in 2024 has no double-digit favorites, with the Cincinnati Bengals being the largest at -8.5 over the New England Patriots, but that’s not too out of the ordinary, as 2019 was the last Week 1 to feature a double-digit favorite at all.
What is a bit more peculiar is the advantage sportsbooks are giving to home teams to begin the season: In Week 1, only two teams are favored on the road, tied with 1991 for the fewest to begin any season in the Super Bowl era, according to ESPN Stats and Info.
The first road favorites are the Houston Texans, who are giving three points to the Indianapolis Colts, per ESPN BET. DeMeco Ryans’ squad has been one of the most hyped teams of the offseason and has the futures handle to prove it, so it should come as little surprise that the public is backing them to begin the campaign. Houston has 78.1% of the tickets and 51.9% of the handle at ESPN BET, while BetMGM reports 78% of the wagers and 81% of the money for the Texans to cover.
That heavy action likely had a role to play in moving Houston to its current position from the opening line of -1.5. The same goes for the Minnesota Vikings, who actually opened as one-point underdogs before crossing the line to become 1.5-point favorites over the New York Giants.
ESPN BET says 63.8% of its tickets and 69.8% of its handle is on the Vikings to cover, while BetMGM reports 70% of bets and 69% of handle.
This matchup, even with the big line move, is a lot closer than the other in the eyes of bettors. FanDuel notes that 55% of tickets and 66% of handle is on the Giants to cover the underdog spread, and, further, all three books report the majority of bet and handle share on New York to win the game outright, currently lined up at +105 on ESPN BET.
Sept. 4: New York Jets favored to win AFC East
Doug Greenberg: The last time the New York Jets won the AFC East, their 40-year-old quarterback had just started college and their star cornerback was 2 years old. Yet despite not winning their division since 2002 — tied with the Las Vegas Raiders for the second-longest active drought in the NFL behind only the Cleveland Browns — the Jets find themselves as the consensus favorites to win it this season.
At ESPN BET, New York shows +160 odds to win the AFC East, ahead of the Buffalo Bills (+185), Miami Dolphins (+225) and New England Patriots (+2500). The Jets opened at +275 to initially put them behind Buffalo and Miami, but very heavy action from the betting public forced the dramatic line movement.
Gang Green has received easily the highest share of bets and handle across several of the major American sportsbooks, attracting 58% of handle at ESPN BET, 67.4% at BetMGM, 50% at DraftKings and 43% at FanDuel. In all of those cases, the share of money is larger than the share of tickets, indicating that it’s not just small-wagers bettors taking fliers on the Jets.
To compensate, sportsbooks have lengthened the odds on the division’s other teams, with ESPN BET moving the Bills from +130 to +185 and the Dolphins from +200 to +225.
New York has also proven to be a popular bet in the conference championship market, taking 24% of the bets to win the AFC, more than any other team — though the handle numbers are not as impressive and fewer bettors are taking the Jets to win the Super Bowl.
“Not only do the Jets have Rodgers coming back, but they have been touted now for a couple years, since they had that good draft [in 2022], that they’re gonna be a contender,” DraftKings director of sportsbook operations Johnny Avello told ESPN.
To find the last time the Jets were favored to win the division, you’d have to go back to 1999. That season, Vinny Testaverde tore his achilles in the second quarter of the opening game, eerily reminiscent of what the promising Jets went through last season with Rodgers.
Sept. 3: Florida State joins unfortunate company after two outright upsets
Greenberg: The college football world was abuzz last December about how undefeated ACC champion Florida State was snubbed from the College Football Playoff. That discourse was a major reason why FSU came into this season ranked as a top-10 team, both in the preseason AP poll and in the betting odds to win the national championship.
But just two weeks into 2024 college football season, the conversation has shifted enormously. After two huge upset losses to Georgia Tech (+10.5) and Boston College (+16.5), the Seminoles became just the third FBS team since 2010 to lose its first two games outright as a double-digit favorite, joining 2015 Wyoming and 2017 Baylor, per ESPN Stats & Information.
As a result, Florida State’s future odds have plummeted. The Seminoles fell from 35-1 to 200-1 to win the national championship at ESPN BET, +150 to 20-1 to make the playoff and +300 to 25-1 to win the ACC. The team now sits eighth with Miami (+185) currently the new favorite.
Bettors might have seen Florida State’s decline coming. Before the season, the Noles had just 1.8% of handle to make the playoff and 1.2% of handle to win the national championship at BetMGM.
The Seminoles are highly unlikely to stay in AP Top 25 at 0-2, which would make them the third team since 1989, along with 2007 Michigan and 2008 Clemson, to fall out of the Top 25 in the season’s second week after being ranked inside the top 10.
The Seminoles have a bye in Week 2 before facing Memphis in Week 3 at home on Sept. 14.
Aug. 26: Bettors shying away from defending champion Michigan
Purdum: Rarely has the betting interest on a defending national champion been this low entering a college football season.
The Michigan Wolverines can be found as long as 40-1 to win this season’s College Football Playoff, the longest preseason odds for a defending champion since the 2020 LSU Tigers, who, like Michigan this year, lost a bevy of stars to the NFL a season after winning it all. The Wolverines’ season win total is 8.5 at ESPN BET, the lowest for any defending champion since Auburn (6.5) in 2011, according to betting odds archive SportsOddsHistory.com.
“So far, we’ve seen little to no interest on Michigan,” said Joey Feazel, Caesars Sportsbook’s lead college football oddsmaker, in a recent phone interview with ESPN.
Michigan had 13 players selected in the 2024 NFL draft, including quarterback J.J. McCarthy, and coach Jim Harbaugh also departed for the pros. The personnel losses and a schedule considered to be one of the nation’s toughest have very few bettors interested in backing the Wolverines at sportsbooks.
There have been approximately seven times as many bets to win the national championship on the Ohio State Buckeyes as there have been on Michigan at ESPN BET. The Buckeyes, Georgia Bulldogs, Texas Longhorns, Oregon Ducks, Notre Dame Fighting Irish and Alabama Crimson Tide each have attracted more money wagered than the Wolverines.
Ed Salmons, a veteran Las Vegas oddsmaker with the Westgate SuperBook, described the betting interest on Michigan as “zero.”
“We’ve got a hundred bucks on them and have them at 40-1,” Salmons told ESPN.
Michigan opens its season Saturday as a 21.5-point favorite versus the visiting Fresno State Bulldogs.
Aug. 19: Historic pace of unders in low-scoring NFL preseason
Purdum: The NFL preseason is on pace to be the lowest scoring in the past 30 years, with games averaging just 31.4 points over the first two weeks.
The average over/under total at sportsbooks has been around 36.5, which has resulted in a slew of unders. Twenty-six of 32 games have gone under the total in the first two weeks of the preseason. Unders went 12-4 in Week 1, excluding the weather-shortened Hall of Fame Game. The trend continued in Week 2, with 14 of 16 games going under.
Bettors appear to be following the trend, as ESPN BET reported that 15 of the 16 Week 2 preseason games attracted more bets on the under than the over, with the money wagered on totals being lopsided on the under in some contests.
Sportsbooks are adjusting this week, with the average over/under total on Week 3 games as of Monday at ESPN BET sitting at 34.8.
Aug. 15: Paul Skenes sees Rookie of the Year odds move dramatically in a week
Purdum: Coming out of the All-Star break, the race for National League Rookie of the Year appeared over, with Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes emerging as an overwhelming favorite. There was even talk of Skenes as a Cy Young contender in the N.L.
Things have changed dramatically. Skenes’ Rookie of the Year odds have moved from -4000 to -225 in a week at ESPN BET.
Skenes had been as short as -5000 on July 24 but has lost back-to-back starts in August and now finds himself in a tight contest with San Diego Padres center fielder Jackson Merrill for the award. Merrill’s odds to win NL Rookie of the Year have improved from +1400 to +160 over the last week at ESPN BET.
On Tuesday, a bettor holding 10 $100 bets on Skenes to win ROY, each at 50-1, elected to put his tickets up for sale on PropSwap, an online secondary market where pending wagers are bought and sold. In total, the 10 wagers would pay out $51,000. The tickets sold for $28,000 on Wednesday, the largest baseball transaction in PropSwap’s history, according to co-founder Luke Pergande.
Skenes, who did not make his MLB debut until May, is 6-2 on the season, with a 2.25 ERA and 115 strikeouts for the last-place Pirates. Merrill is batting .286 with 17 home runs and 64 RBIs for the Padres, who trail the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers by 3.5 games in the National League West.
Aug. 14: O’Malley opens as underdog to Dvalishvili at Noche UFC
UFC Noche takes place on Sept. 14 at The Sphere in Las Vegas (ESPN+ PPV). It features two title fights, including the next bantamweight title defense for Sean O’Malley. Ian Parker looks at the lines and potential props for those two bouts to offer some early analysis.
Bantamweight title fight: Sean O’Malley vs. Merab Dvalishvili
Parker: This is one of the most anticipated title fights of 2024. It’s as close to striker vs. grappler matchup as you will get in modern MMA. Dvalishvili’s path to victory is to avoid the KO power of O’Malley and turn it into a five-round wrestling match in order to dethrone the champ. For O’Malley, he’ll have to play sprawl and brawl until he touches Dvalishvili’s chin. O’Malley is currently a +114 underdog (according to ESPN BET) and it’s definitely hard to pass up on those odds if you believe he will be able to stop Dvalishvili’s takedowns and win by TKO.
One prop to keep an eye on is the combination of O’Malley to win by KO/TKO and Dvalishvili to win by decision. Dvalishvili has been dropped in the first round of almost every fight he has been in and had to recover to get the win. When he has won, it’s been mostly by decision. The question is, if he gets dropped by O’Malley, will he be able to recover?
Flyweight title fight: Valentina Shevchenko vs. Alexa Grasso 3
The co-main event should be a very competitive fight that will likely come down to who makes the least mistakes. I thought Shevchenko won the last fight that ended in a split draw. She was also up on all of the scorecards in the first fight until she threw a spinning wheel kick that put her in position to lose the belt. It’s hard to tell if anyone has improved since then as both fighters have not competed while waiting for the trilogy bout.
Grasso is currently a slight favorite at -115 while Shevchenko sits at -105. I expect these lines to fluctuate between now and fight day. I would lean Shevchenko here as I still believe she is the better fighter, but if you don’t want to choose a side, take the over on rounds as I believe no one gets finished in this one.
Aug. 12: Sportsbooks aligned with AP preseason poll
Doug Greenberg: Over seven months after Michigan took down Washington in the College Football Playoff National Championship, the Associated Press released their first Top 25 poll of the preseason Monday. The initial rankings conform with how sportsbooks view the elite teams in the country.
The top six teams in Monday’s preseason poll are also the consensus top six betting favorites to win the national championship at ESPN BET.
Georgia (+325) and Ohio State (+325) are the current co-betting favorites, followed by Oregon (+700), Texas (+850), Alabama (+1400) and Ole Miss (+1600).
The No. 7 spot in the AP poll, currently occupied by Notre Dame, is where the first discrepancy occurs. The Fighting Irish show +2500 odds to win it all in 2025, which places them tied for the eighth-shortest odds with Penn State.
The Fighting Irish have odds that are longer than LSU (+2000), who display one of the largest discrepancies between the two lists given their No. 13 ranking in the AP poll. The Miami Hurricanes also show a six-place discrepancy, ranking 13th on the odds board (+4000, tied with Tennessee) but 19th for AP.
Finally, Iowa closes out the AP poll by taking the 25th spot, but if it were up to bookmakers, the Hawkeyes wouldn’t have made the cut. Iowa (250-1, tied with five other teams) is the 30th-ranked team to win the national title.
As far as action goes, No. 2 Ohio State has been one of the most popular teams among bettors, racking up 20.5% of the tickets and 28.2% of the handle at BetMGM as of the first week of August. No. 1 Georgia has 11.8% of the bets, but an impressive 21.2% of the handle.
Aug. 6: Patriots face worst futures odds in Robert Kraft era
Greenberg: Gone are the days when the Bill Belichick-led New England Patriots were betting favorites to contend for the Super Bowl at the beginning of every season. With new head coach Jerod Mayo and franchise quarterback of the future Drake Maye as the main characters of a rebuild, the Pats are seeing their worst preseason future odds in over three decades.
The Patriots are listed at 250-1 to win the Super Bowl at ESPN BET and have a regular season win total of 4.5 (juiced to the over at -150), both the lowest since the pre-Robert Kraft era in 1991 when they were 500-1 with a win total of 4.
DraftKings has individual game lines for all of New England’s games this upcoming season and the Pats are not favored in a single one. Should that hold, it would mark the first time in franchise history that the team was not favored in any game.
Line movement has not been working for the Patriots’ either: From open until today New England has moved from +1800 to +2500 to win the AFC East, +7500 to 100-1 to win the AFC, and 150-1 to 250-1 to win the Super Bowl at ESPN BET.
While the win total itself has not moved, the price on the over has moved in New England’s favor, going from -145 at open to -170 in May and ultimately settling into its current position at -150. This is likely because of the 58.4% of bets and 73.5% of money is on the over, per ESPN BET.
BetMGM denotes that the Pats are the third most-bet team by tickets in the league to go over their win total (though 58% of handle at the book is on the under) and 95% of money is on them to make the playoffs, though the action is limited, according to the book. On the flip side, New England is the most-bet team in the NFL to have the fewest wins this season at DraftKings (+320 favorite).
There is one potential transaction that may or may not factor into the Patriots’ odds this season: According to multiple reports, 49ers wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk could be traded to New England, but at this point, odds haven’t moved on the news and aren’t likely to, even if the trade goes through. This is because, as one sportsbook representative put it, “the Patriots will still be bad.”
Aug 2: Texans-Bears preseason game attracts more bets than MLB
Purdum: The first NFL preseason game attracted more betting interest than any of Thursday’s regular-season baseball games at multiple sportsbooks, but a lot of the action ultimately was refunded after the Houston Texans–Chicago Bears contest was cut short due to severe weather.
With storms rolling into Canton, Ohio, the Hall of Fame Game was stopped with 3:31 left in the third quarter and the Bears leading 21-17. The Texans closed as 2.5-point favorites at ESPN BET, with the over/under total at 32.5.
Most sportsbook rules state that football games must go 55 minutes for bets to be action, although there are some nuances. ESPN Bet and Fanatics, for example, voided wagers that had not been determined, such as the point spread and over/under totals. Successful prop bets like if a player scored a touchdown during the game were paid at Fanatics.
Texans-Bears attracted more bets than any of Thursday’s five MLB games at BetMGM sportsbooks. A spokesperson for Fanatics told ESPN that the NFL game attracted approximately 17 times more bets than the most popular MLB game (Baltimore Orioles–Cleveland Guardians).
“Despite limited participation from starters and weather leading to an early ending, Texans-Bears was one of the most popular events of the day on ESPN BET by both tickets and handle,” Patrick Jay, senior vice president and head of ESPN BET, told ESPN. “An abbreviated preseason game comparing favorably to MLB action and the Olympics signals the vast popularity of football, and how eager fans are for the return of NFL.”
