Football’s popularity is at an all-time high all over the world. Most Sundays through Tuesdays, folks from all over are poring over everything from matchups to statistics and past performance results.
Wagering on the action throughout the NFL season can be enormous fun, and the good news is that with just a little time and effort, anybody can become a profitable bettor.
Getting Started
With so many bookmakers all around the world offering NFL markets, there’s never any shortage of action.
There are many ways to bet on the NFL, including the money line, point spread, and over/unders betting. Getting started is as simple as signing up with an online bookmaker of your choice and accessing the many popular NFL markets on their site.
Things To Keep In Mind
Below are some suggestions that will teach you how to make winning NFL picks, and even come up with a strategy that is right for you personally:
- Use your head. By this we mean betting with your head instead of your heart (emotions). Even though this may sound like common knowledge, a surprising number of sports betting enthusiasts struggle to let go of their personal biases to make smarter wagers. The key is to work at becoming more objective and to look at NFL predictions with an open mind.
- Location matters. It’s absolutely true that home-field advantage is a real thing. What’s more, it matters more at certain stadiums than at others. To this end, it is vital that you do your research by drawing a comparison between each team’s historical home vs. away results.
- Some teams travel better than others. Within the NFL, there are teams that simply don’t travel well. This is why knowing where teams played during previous weeks is important. An example of this is to consider how West Coast teams travelling to Eastern Time Zones generally don’t experience too much difficulty in adapting to the time change. East Coast teams, however, when travelling to play on the Pacific Coast, are playing on average three hours later in the day than what they’re used to. This can make a decided difference to performance.
- Get familiar with individual matchups. Even though football is a team sport, individual matchups have been known to dramatically affect results. To this end, pay particular attention to players who will be going head-to-head, and consider their individual strengths and weaknesses.
- Stay up to date on injury reports. Since football truly is the ultimate team sport, a single major injury has the potential to completely throw the balance out of whack.
- Diversify your wagers. While there’s certainly a lot of money to be made off popular bets like the moneyline and totals, it is important to educate yourself about alternative wagers.
General Betting Tips
When betting on the NFL, just like with any other sport, there are general rules to bet by if you want to achieve success over the long term.
We consider the following to be the most valuable for betting on the NFL:
- Never chase your losses. This will only lead to more losses.
- Don’t drink alcohol when betting.
- Draw a budget and stick to it.
- Be a smart bettor. Look for actual value before you bet.