The Vig: How Sportsbooks Make Money
In short: At standard -110 pricing, you need to win 52.4% of your bets just to break even. That 4.5% gap between 50% and 52.4% is the vig — the margin sportsbooks build into every line. It’s the single biggest reason most casual bettors lose money long-term, and most don’t realize it.
Sharp books charge less, retail books charge more, and exchanges charge none. Once you understand how the vig works, you can start shopping for better prices and identifying when the math actually favors you.
What Is the Vig?
The vig — short for “vigorish,” also called the juice, margin, or overround — is the percentage above 100% that a sportsbook’s implied probabilities sum to. It’s how the book makes money.
Take a coin-flip game where both outcomes are exactly 50/50. Fair odds would be +100 on each side (risk $100 to win $100). At those prices, the book makes nothing on average and the bettor faces no headwind.
But sportsbooks don’t post fair odds. They post -110 on both sides:
- -110 → implied probability of 52.4%
- Combined: 52.4% + 52.4% = 104.8%
That extra 4.8% is the vig. On a balanced book where money is split evenly between the two sides, the sportsbook keeps about 4.5% of total wagered as profit, regardless of who wins. Pinnacle’s betting resources section explains this from the book’s perspective: the vig is what allows them to operate as a market-maker.
Why You Need to Win More Than 50%
Here’s what makes the vig insidious. At -110 odds, a winning bet pays $90.91 in profit per $100 risked. A losing bet costs the full $100.
If you win exactly half your bets at -110:
- 50 wins × $90.91 = $4,545.45
- 50 losses × $100 = $5,000.00
- Net loss: $454.55 per 100 bets
That’s a 4.5% loss on every dollar wagered. Win exactly half your bets and you slowly bleed money.
The break-even win rate at -110 is 52.4% — exactly the implied probability of -110. To actually make money, you need to win more than 52.4% of your bets. Most casual bettors don’t, which is why the house wins long-term.
How Vig Varies Between Books
Not all sportsbooks charge the same vig, and the differences are significant.
| Book Type | Typical Vig | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Sharp books | 2-3% | Pinnacle, Circa |
| Major retail books | 4-5% | DraftKings, FanDuel |
| Retail props markets | 6-10% | Most US books |
| Smaller markets | Up to 15% | Niche sports, exotic props |
| Exchanges | 0% (commission instead) | Novig, Betfair |
A real example from April 2026: an MLB game between the Cincinnati Reds and Tampa Bay Rays. Two books posted very different prices on the same matchup.
DraftKings:
- Reds -110, Rays -110
- Combined implied probability: 104.8% → 4.8% vig
Pinnacle:
- Reds -108, Rays +100
- Combined implied probability: 101.9% → 1.9% vig
For a bettor placing 100 bets at flat amounts on each book, the difference is real money. At DraftKings, the average bet faces a 4.8% headwind. At Pinnacle, it’s only 1.9%. Over hundreds of bets, that gap compounds into a meaningful chunk of bankroll.
This is why line shopping — checking odds across multiple books before placing a bet — matters so much.
How to Remove the Vig
To estimate the true probability the book is actually estimating, you strip the vig from the implied probabilities. The standard method (called multiplicative vig removal) is straightforward:
true probability = implied probability ÷ combined implied probabilityFor DraftKings’ -110/-110 line on the Reds @ Rays:
- Reds true prob: 52.4% ÷ 104.8% = 50.0%
- Rays true prob: 52.4% ÷ 104.8% = 50.0%
For Pinnacle’s -108/+100 line:
- Reds true prob: 51.9% ÷ 101.9% = 50.9%
- Rays true prob: 50.0% ÷ 101.9% = 49.1%
Both books think this is essentially a coin flip, but Pinnacle thinks the Reds have a very slight edge. The difference between the two books’ true-probability estimates is much smaller than the difference between their raw odds — the rest is just margin.
This vig-removal step is the foundation for +EV betting. When you compare a sharp book’s vig-removed probability to a retail book’s implied probability, the gap is your potential edge.
A Note on Exchanges
Betting exchanges like Novig and Betfair work differently. They don’t bake vig into the odds — instead, they charge a commission (typically 2-5%) on winning bets only.
Exchange prices are typically very close to fair value because they emerge from peer-to-peer trading, not from a bookmaker’s margin. This means:
- Don’t apply vig removal to exchange odds. They already reflect fair value. Removing vig that isn’t there will overstate your estimated edge.
- Do factor in commission when calculating expected value on an exchange bet.
The same principle applies to prediction markets like Kalshi, where prices emerge from order book trading rather than a bookmaker’s pricing model.
What Vig Means for Your Bets
The practical implications:
Always check multiple books before placing a bet. The vig difference between the best and worst price on a typical market can be 2-3 percentage points. Over hundreds of bets, that compounds into hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Be especially careful with parlays. Each leg of a parlay carries its own vig, and the vig compounds when you combine them. A four-leg parlay at -110 each has an effective vig of around 18% — quadruple the standard rate. This is why parlays usually favor the book.
Treat sharp books and exchanges as reference points. Their lower vig means their prices are closer to true probability. When a retail book’s price differs significantly from the sharp consensus, that gap is where edges live.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the difference between “vig” and “hold”?
Vig is the margin built into the odds (the amount above 100% in combined implied probabilities). Hold is the actual percentage of total wagered that the book keeps after all bets settle. They’re related but not identical — a book can have, say, 4.5% vig but a 6% hold if betting volume skews toward favorites that lose.
Why is vig higher on props than on game lines?
Player props are less liquid, less closely watched by sharp bettors, and harder for books to price accurately. Higher vig compensates books for the increased uncertainty and prevents sharps from picking off mispriced lines. The flip side: this is why props are also one of the richest areas for finding edges.
Can I find books with no vig?
True zero-vig pricing only exists on exchanges and some prediction markets, where the platform’s revenue comes from commission rather than odds margin. Among traditional bookmakers, sharp books like Pinnacle come closest, with vig sometimes as low as 2% on major markets.
What’s “reduced juice”?
Some books occasionally offer reduced-juice pricing on certain markets — for example, -105/-105 instead of the standard -110/-110. This means lower vig (about 2.4% instead of 4.5%). Bookmaker.eu and a few other sharp-leaning books offer reduced juice as a regular feature; major retail books rarely do.
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