Baseball bet wagers are oftentimes not the favorite wager with sportsbook managers. The main reason for this is that baseball betting is a money line sport and that is usually not good news for the sportsbook. It is rare when gamblers get an advantage over a sportsbook but placing a baseball wager is one way the gamblers can get it. Baseball bet wagers are offered by sportsbooks more as a convenience to gamblers than anything else. The baseball wager is extremely important to many sports gamblers around the world and where some make their money for the whole year. There are many people that will focus on baseball betting more than any other type of sports wagering and that fact is not lost on sportsbooks.
What happens in baseball betting that will cause sportsbooks so much trouble is the winning and losing streaks. Remember that the baseball bet is based on money lines. This means that the sportsbook can do nothing to stop you from winning. Sure, they can raise the price on the game, but they can’t stop you from winning your baseball bet. For example, let’s say the Yankees have run off 7 straight wins and are home against the Royals.
All the sportsbook can do is raise the money line price on the Yankees. They might raise it to -300 or more, but they can’t stop you from making a baseball bet and winning that wagers because there is no pointspread. This is bad news for the books if teams get on big streaks because they can do nothing to stop it. In other sports like football or basketball you have the big equalizer, the pointspread. That is not the case with a baseball wager and it causes sportsbooks all kinds of problems.
Having said how much trouble baseball betting can cause the sportsbooks you would think that favorites would rule the day. That is not always what causes the books trouble either. Many gamblers making a baseball bet will continually bet underdogs because they can hit less than 50% and still make money. In addition to the winning streaks, another problem for the sportsbooks when it comes to gamblers making a baseball bet is parlays. In most sports the parlays are good news for the books, but baseball is dangerous in terms of parlays for the books because there are no pointspreads. If a bunch of favorites come in then parlays are likely to hit. Many professional gamblers will play the huge parlays looking for that one to come in during the season for a huge payoff on a baseball wager.