As a sports bettor, there’s nothing more gratifying than cashing in on a big moneyline underdog wager. Whether you’re a hard-core handicapper who’s crunching every potential number or even more of a recreational bettor who is based on your gut over anything else, the thrill and greed of moving after that plus-money activity is possibly the most aggressive component of sports gambling.
Be careful, however, because we all know some jackass who beat the book large that one time on a few ridiculous parlay bet (I have been jackass some time or two). It is probably a narrative they bring up often, but the truth is, these huge multi-leg parlay bets rarely win and the most appropriate course of action when betting underdogs is to limit your risk and make individual game bets. With that in mind, I’ve compiled a comprehensive breakdown of the way underdogs perform in the most well-known sports leagues in North America.
Underdog win percentages Here’s the win percent of underdogs for the previous five full regular seasons of the NFL, NBA, NHL MLB, NCAA Basketball, NCAA Football, together with the past five decades of the UFC:These numbers shouldn’t come as much of a shock, even though I would have anticipated the NHL to become higher than MLB since baseball is a lower-scoring game. In terms of both college sport, we often see games that are so lopsided that moneyline odds aren’t even on the board. Each college league offers some matchups with such drastic disparities in performances amounts, often on a nightly basis. We do not observe this at the pro leagues therefore the very low underdog win percentages make sense.