Winning with NFL Halftime Lines
This may be a surprise to you, but the betting that is done on an NFL game doesn’t stop after the game kicks off. Things have progressed in the sportsbook industry to the point that you can not only place wagers during breaks in the action (when the game goes to a commercial or a team calls a timeout) but also while the game is in progress (the phenomenon known as “live betting“).
Understanding Halftime Bets
For quite some time now, sportsbooks – both online and land-based – have been taking bets during the halftime breaks of games. Not
surprisingly, these are referred to as “halftime bets.” This allows you to place a point spread wager, a totals wager, and in some cases even special propositions.
The structure of these bets, from the sportsbook’s perspective, is pretty much the same as the line you would see at the beginning of a game. But the process, by definition, has to be at least a little different.
Historical Context and Evolution
There was a time when the Nevada sportsbooks, which in the pre-internet days were the ones available to the public at large, would place halftime lines only on games that were on national television. The rationale behind this was that the general public (the “squares,” as it were) would normally be the people who’d bet on halftime lines for the games on television (good for the sportsbooks), they would usually get “sharp money” on the non-televised games, which created an awful lot of exposure for them.
Things have changed quite a bit in the years since. And that has a great deal to do with the competition that exists between sportsbooks because there are so many choices for the betting public.
In addition to this, there is a mechanism by which any NFL game can be seen, between the network coverage and the Sunday Ticket offering.
The Dynamics of Live Betting
So these establishments can’t help but post halftime lines. As you can imagine, they need to be sharp or else the sportsbook will put itself at a higher risk than usual.
We’re not sure that doing this based on algorithms alone would make a lot of sense because one of the fundamentals involved here is to know something about the half that was just played and devise the number accordingly, unless they were doing it merely as a function of what their closing line was.
Challenges for Sportsbooks
I don’t care how many statistics and analytics one has at their disposal; it’s a challenge for any sportsbook’s staff to review the first half of all
those games sufficiently.
It’s not our purpose here to prepare a primer on “How to Beat Halftime Lines,” because a lot of what goes into it is going to revolve around the strength of your own observation and instinct. In addition, it might also involve not only what your opinion may have been coming into the game and whether you think the factors you used in your handicapping are still pertinent.
Opportunities for Bettors
As you’re reading this, you should remember a few things. One is that the oddsmakers have a limited amount of time to post halftime lines because something might happen right before the half to alter things, and then the window for wagers is only 12-15 minutes.
So there is very little time to ponder, huddle, or consult. Another is that while the sportsbook has to be as sharp as possible on a wide range of games, you only need to be sharp on one or two.
If you can think quickly, you might be able to do pretty well.
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