To understand tennis betting odds margins, it helps if you understand how sportsbooks
make money. On tennis, or for any sport for that matter, the goal for a sportsbook
is to balance potential payouts among all the potential event outcomes so that the
stakes from the losing wagers can cover the winning wagers. When balanced, the sportsbook
will make a small percentage of revenue through the odds pricing margins that it
offered.
If the sportsbook does a poor job of balancing the potential payouts, they could
be left to cover the payout from their own resources. This is why handicaps and
odds prices change. When a lot of money is being wagered on one particular player,
like a fan favourite, the sportsbook will lower the price on the heavily wagered-upon
outcome and increase the odds price for the other outcome(s) and/or alter the handicap.
This is the sportsbook’s effort to shift betting interest to help balance the eventual
payouts.
Sportsbooks build their profit margins into the odds across all potential event outcomes.
These margin percentages vary from sportsbook to sportsbook and betting market to
betting market. Some sportsbooks focus on providing excellent margin value on particular
sports, but use higher margins on others, while some sportsbooks approach all sports
with essentially the same margins.
Here is an example of how tennis odds margins are calculated using decimal odds,
so you can see how sportsbooks make their revenue:
For the sake of a simple example, let’s say it is a very even match with two great
players: Djokovic at 1.95 and Murray at 1.95. The formula would read as follows:
(1/1.95)*100 + (1/1.95)*100 = 51.28 + 51.28 = 102.56%. This thus indicates a sportsbook
margin of 2.56%
How does this work in real money terms? Since the odds are the same on both sides,
the goal would be to have the same amount wagered on each side. If a total of$1,000,000
was bet on the match with $500,000 on each side, those that won their bet would be
entitled to $500,000 * 1.95 = $975,000. Those that lost, obviously receive nothing,
this leaves the sportsbook with $25,000 in revenue on this particular match. Note
this is revenue, not profit as the sportsbook certainly has operational costs in
order to provide their service.
If Djokovic were to play an unseeded player ranking in the hundreds, you can imagine
that Djokovic would be listed as a very heavy favourite with odds prices in the range
of 1.01 (1/100) to 1.05 (1/20). Quite simply, very few people will be betting on
the heavy underdog, thus the underdog will pay heavily from 12 to 1 up to even 30
to 1 in order to achieve the same odds margin around 2.5%. If a match ever gets
to a point where bettors just won’t lay stakes on the underdog, the sportsbook will
simply stop taking bets as the goal as ever is to balance the potential payout on
both sides.
So for odds on Djokovic at 1.01 (1/100) and the Unknown Underdog at 28.7 (that’s
an odds margin of about 2.5%), as ever, the sportsbook is looking to balance the
potential payouts. If there is 1,000,000 bet on the match in total, the revenue
for the sportsbook will again be $25,000. Of that $1,000,000 wagered, the target
for the sportsbook is to have about $965,346 bet on Djokovic and only about $34,843
bet on the underdog. No matter the result, the money for the winning bets is covered
by the money from the losing bets and the sportsbook earns its revenue through the
2.5% odds margin.
Below, you’ll find the tennis betting odds margins offered at each of best tennis
betting sites for Money Line bets (to win the match) and where available, the most
popular handicap market which involves the number of total games a player must win
by in order for you to win the bet. To learn more you can read about this handicap
and other tennis betting markets. Below, the general odds margin range for other
major sports is also listed, incase you expect to bet on sports other than tennis.