Futures, and the worst hold on the board

A futures market has thirty sides and a fee to match. Measuring it is easy, and the number is usually alarming.

A futures market has thirty sides and a fee to match. Measuring it takes two minutes, and the number is usually alarming.

Measuring one yourself

The method is the same as any other market: convert every price to an implied probability and add them up. The only difference is that there are far more of them.

A championship market, added up

Favourite +450 → 18.2%.
Second +600 → 14.3%.
Third +750 → 11.8%.
...and twenty-nine more, down to +50000.
Total across every team: 125%.

An overround of 25 points, which is a hold of about 20%. Every dollar bet into that market gives up twenty cents before anything is decided.

Compare that with 4.55% on a game line. A futures market is four to six times more expensive to bet through, and nothing about the ticket tells you so.

Why the fee is so large

Many outcomes, each carrying a slice. The fee is spread across thirty prices instead of two.
Money sits for months. The book holds your stake all season, and it prices that.
Almost nobody corrects it. Sharp money does not tie up capital for six months at a 20% fee, so the market never gets tested the way a game line does.
It is sold on story, not price. Futures are bought because a team looks good in August, which is not a price-sensitive purchase.

That last point is why the fee survives. A market where the customers are not comparing prices does not have to be competitive.

The two cases where a futures bet still makes sense

A genuinely mispriced longshot. With thirty prices to set, a book will sometimes leave one badly wrong — usually a team whose situation has changed and whose number has not. The fee is large, but so can be the error.
A position you intend to hedge later. A futures ticket bought in August and hedged in January is really two bets, and the second one is priced in a far more efficient market.

What is not a good reason

"It is only $20 and the payout is huge" prices nothing. A large payout on a market holding 20% is a large payout on a bad price. If the stake is genuinely entertainment, that is fine — just do not mistake it for a bet you have analysed.

Where this leaves you

Every market in this course now has a number attached to it: about 2% at a sharp book, 4.55% at standard juice, 6-8% on props, 9-20% on parlays, 20%+ on futures. That single scale explains more about which bets are worth making than any opinion about any team.

It also answers the question the first lesson opened with. A sportsbook does not need to predict games. It needs you not to notice the fee — and now you can measure it on anything they offer.

Add up the implied probabilities yourself — this lesson shows what to expect. Price a futures market.