SportsLine's Sports Betting Guide Series: Tips and Strategies
From a step-by-step process on how to read odds to advanced MLB, NBA and NFL betting strategies, here's the sports betting guide you need to read before placing a sports bet.
Betting on sports has never been bigger in the United States. In 2025, total legal wagers in the country soared to $166.9 billion, a substantial increase from 2024's record of $147.9 billion. With the availability of sports gambling driving this unprecedented growth, knowing how to bet on sports has never been more important.
For that reason, SportsLine has created this series of guides on sports betting. The guides will cover everything from basic topics (e.g., what is a point spread?) to advanced ones (e.g., the drawback of attempting to "middle" a game). Both beginning and advanced bettors can benefit from the series. It's Sports Betting 101 and Sports Betting Masterclass rolled into one.
This series of guides is divided into three categories:
- Bet types (point spread, money line, futures, parlays, etc.)
- Bets by sport (NFL, NBA, MLB, college football and basketball, etc.)
- Strategy (best and worst betting strategies and how to read odds)
Bet type guides
These guides will explain the most popular types of sports bets and how to place them.
A futures bet is a wager on a long-term result in sports, such as picking an NFL team to win the Super Bowl or betting on a player to be named NBA MVP.
In this guide, we break down how to understand futures odds, explore futures betting in major sports, explain the various types of futures bets, and highlight the best times to place them.
Money line bets are the simplest type of wager and a great starting point for beginners. Instead of worrying about point spreads or totals, you're simply picking who will win a specific game, event or match, whether it's a team or individual event.
This guide will walk you through what a money line bet is and how to place one.
Betting on the total of a game is betting on whether the combined score of both teams will exceed or fall short of the set Over/Under line. The winner of the game doesn't matter—only the score does. Individual sports like tennis or mixed martial arts also have Over/Under lines based around the number of games or rounds the contest might last. This guide will discuss how Over/Under betting works and how and when to place a bet on the Over/Under.
A parlay is a single bet that links together two or more individual wagers, which are also known as legs. For the parlay to win, all of the individual legs need to win.
This guide will explain the process of betting a parlay, the varying types of parlays, the drawbacks of parlays, the popularity of parlays and the one strategy someone should consider when betting a parlay.
A point spread is a way to level the playing field between a favorite and an underdog by setting a margin of victory. Rather than betting on an underdog to win straight up, you can bet on them to either lose by fewer points than the spread or win the game outright. Likewise, instead of paying a steep price on a favorite's money line, you can bet on them to win by more than the spread. This balances the odds for both sides.
This guide will explain how point-spread betting works and how to place bets against the spread.
A prop bet is a wager that looks to predict a specific outcome for a player or team within a game. A prop bet can be similar to an Over/Under of total points in a game, except applied to an individual team or player. This guide will take a look at the various forms of prop betting, explain prop betting odds and explore the many available options when it comes to prop betting.
Sport-specific betting guides (updated August 18, 2026)
These guides will take a sport-by-sport look at sports betting, explaining the intricacies of wagering on the NFL, NBA, MLB and college basketball and football.
It's not a surprise that the U.S.'s biggest sport is also the most popular sport to wager on. From spreads and money lines to player props and futures, people line up to get in on the action from the gridiron. Besides defining the most important NFL betting markets, we also offer advice on how to bet the sport like a pro.
The NBA has changed a lot over the past decade, and as a result, bettors have needed to adjust their betting strategy on the sport as well. This guide will go over all the ways to wager on the NBA and share key tips on how to wager on a sport that has tremendous variance with the rise of three-point shooting and questions of whether players will sit on any given night.
MLB has command of the spotlight in the summer, as there are many games every day to bet on. But because it's a 162-game season, it can be a tricky sport to bet. This guide will explain what you need to know about baseball betting, from run lines to specific strategies to help you during the dog days of summer.
Does college football betting differ from NFL betting? While both sports have similar markets, there are different strategies for wagering on the collegiate ranks compared to the pros. This guide will analyze all the dynamics for betting college football and what you need to be on the lookout for.
March is like Christmas for sports fans, packed with nonstop excitement from conference tournaments to the NCAA Tournament.
This guide covers everything you need to know about college basketball betting, including tips and advice for beginners looking to get started.
Strategy guides
This section begins with a basic lesson on how to read odds and concludes with an advanced guide on the best and worst sports betting strategies.
Sports betting 101 begins with knowing how to read the odds and understanding how they work. Otherwise, an uninformed bettor may think that wagering money at -105 odds on the Super Bowl coin flip to come up tails provides value when, in the long run, it's a losing proposition.
This guide goes through the three most common types of odds and the difference between odds and implied odds. It also explains odds across different sports as well as odds across different bet types.
With sportsbooks holding a significant edge before a bet is even placed, bettors must be smart with their betting strategies in order to reduce the house's advantage and give them a chance to be successful. Luckily, SportsLine's sports betting experts are sharing the sports betting strategies they employ.
This guide will share SportsLine's experts' general betting strategies, strategies for specific sports and strategies for specific bet types. Just as important, the guide will also give betting strategies to avoid.