What Is the Vigorish In Sports Betting and Why Does It Matter?

The vigorish is a fundamental concept in online sports betting.

If you want to develop into a smart sports bettor, it’s important to understand what it is, what it does, and why it matters to you as an individual.

What Is the Vigorish in Sports Betting?

The vigorish, more commonly referred to as the vig, is the built-in price sports bettors pay to place a wager.

Other names for the vig include juice, rake, take, cut, or hold.

Okay, But I Still Don’t Quite Get It. What Is the Vig?

Imagine you make a $20 bet with your best friend on an upcoming basketball game. You think the Los Angeles Lakers are going to beat the New York Knicks by at least five points. Your friend disagrees. The loser will pay the winner $20.

In sports betting terms, the bet you’ve just placed is Lakers -4.5 (+100). The Lakers must win by more than 4.5 points, and the loser hands over $20.

When you bet with a sportsbook instead of your friend, the odds are a little less friendly. That Lakers -4.5 bet is probably going to be -110 instead of +100. So instead of risking $20 to win $20, you’re risking $20 to win about $18.

That $2 difference is the vig.

How to Think About the Vigorish

The vig is almost like a service tax. By carving out a fractional percentage of most straight bets, the sportsbook creates the margin it needs to make and to financialize most betting markets.

Sports Betting 101: Why the Vig Matters to Bettors

There are a couple of important vig considerations that serious bettors must consider.

The No. 1 place where the vig matters is profit margin. Just like any successful business must navigate its tax obligation to secure a profit, bettors are only profitable if they have made money after accounting for the vig.

That’s why the target percentage for high-level sports bettors is around 52.4%, instead of 50.01%.

That 52.4% mark is for anyone who exclusively places wagers at the -110 price point. If you’re betting juiced lines at -120, or popular props at -125, the barrier to net profit increases because your winnings have been further reduced.

The Impact of the Vig

To really hammer the point home, let’s look at an actual example of the impact of the vigorish.

Imagine you place nine bets you like over the course of a two-week period in March and April. The sports you bet include college basketball, professional basketball, and baseball. You track your action in a spreadsheet that looks like this:

You went 5-4 in your bets, betting an even $10 in every circumstance. But instead of being up $10 at the end of this period, you’re up $3.58 – only about one-third of your unit price. This is not quite even, but not much better, either.

That’s the impact of the vig. Specifically in this case, that’s the impact of betting several props which had increased vigs attached to them – likely because they were popular targets. 

Hunting for Valuable Vigs

If the Vig functions like a tax on betting action, then handicappers are incentivized to look for minimally impactful vigs.

Fortunately, BetMGM regularly drops its vig down to -102 for playoff showdowns and primetime games throughout the year. One way to think about that is that BetMGM is cutting its own take by 80%.

Smart bettors think about price as much as anything else. Be sure to hunt for good vigs, and make sure to take advantage of BetMGM’s reduced vig prices when offered.