One of the most popular sports in the United States of America is American football or simply football. From September until mid-February sports bettor can place their bets on the professional National Football League (NFL Official Site). The NFL is the home of the modern gladiators, athletes that give to the fans excellent entertainment in their games. For years now, NFL is most certainly the most outstanding show in the world, and it attracts a lot of action regarding sports betting.

How to win money betting on NFL

The main question that interest a lot of novice sports bettors is how hard it is to make a consistent profit betting on NFL. In general betting on the US sports isn’t an easy task, but when you put a lot of effort to learn about teams and some other factor that can be helpful, betting on US sports and NFL, in particular, can be really profitable.

Popular sports betting markets in the NFL

Betting on American Football is rather straightforward as you have several basic bet types: Money Line betting, The Spread Betting (similar to handicap betting in basketball) and Totals Betting (betting on the numbers of points that will be scored in the game). In recent years several other markets emerged and now sports bettor can bet on half-time markets, quarter markets, player specials or team specials. All of those markets are variations of standard basic betting markets, and about those markets, we will write in some other article.

Basically, nowadays you can bet on almost anything that can happen in one NFL football game. To be successful sports bettors need to be disciplined and to search for value, as sportsbooks are rather good at setting the odds and the lines on NFL games.

NFL Betting – Tips and Tricks

In American football, maybe more than any other sport there are several outside factors that can determine the outcome of each and every game played. Weather conditions, injuries of key players, travel distance, changing the time zone, are just some of the crucial factors that every respectable sports bettor should take into consideration before placing a bet on NFL game.

The weather conditions can influence the game of football significantly. Those conditions influence the total market the most, but also they are important for other markets. Some teams in NFL play their games in Domes (stadiums with roof-tops) while other teams play games at the open. Weather conditions don’t affect the games played in Domes and in general those games tend to have more points than usual.

Injuries are also an important factor in American football. This sport is one of the most dangerous and brutal sports due to the nature of the game, and in every game there are one or more severe injuries that occur to the players. Those injuries can determine the outcome of the game, but statistical indicators show that on the long run show that public often overreacts on the injury of key player and injuries are not on of the key factors that you should take into consideration when you decide to pace the bet. Don’t forget that every single NFL team has a roster of 50+ professional athletes that are more than capable of covering eventual injuries of few players.

One interesting factor that must be taken seriously is a so-called circadian advantage. Team every week travel the long distances, and often they change time zones, traveling from East coast to West coast and vice versa. The circadian advantage is basically sleep pattern that certain teams can benefit from. The west coast teams have this advantage when games at east are played at night, and east coast teams have this advantage when the games at the west coast are performed during the day.

The bye week is another factor that can impact sports betting. For example, since 1990 after a bye week home teams won 58% of the games and in the last ten years 52.3% of teams covered the spread coming off the bye week.

Bottom Line

Betting on the NFL isn’t an easy task. Average recreational football bettor losses the money in the long run. Most of those sports bettor tend to bet with their heart and not with their brain, and that is the reason why they lose their money. If you learn how to spot the value bet and have discipline, there is no doubt that you will be able to beat the bookies and to make a consistent profit from sports betting on NFL.