How to Bet NFL Futures: Complete Betting Guide & Strategy
Every year, more and more sports bettors flock toward NFL futures, not only because they’re a fun market to bet on but because there are plenty of options to choose from.
This NFL futures betting guide will help you place smart bets to maximize your profits.
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NFL Futures Betting Guide
What is a futures bet?
The vast majority of sports betting is done on single games occurring in the near future. Futures bets are wagers on future events and are decided by a large number of games rather than just one. Futures bets are usually on end-of-season results, such as a team winning a championship or a player winning an award. It is difficult to win, so odds are low, and futures bets generally have large payouts.
Types of futures bets
Futures markets offer a wide variety of betting opportunities. They differ across sportsbooks, but many offer at least a few of the same types of futures bets. The most common are the championship winner, the division/conference winner, and the end-of-season awards. Sportsbooks also offer season-long win totals and specials, such as who will be the first coach fired or the first overall pick. The most popular NFL futures markets are Super Bowl Winner and Most Valuable Player. These odds are released early in the NFL offseason and fluctuate constantly up until the start of the NFL season and after each week of games. The NFL draft has seen a growing futures market that can be very profitable. Sportsbooks offer odds on a ton of NFL draft-related events, such as the over/under on pick number, how many cornerbacks will be drafted in the first round, and which position the Patriots will select. Another market dripping with value is the season-long player props market.
Futures odds
Oddsmakers have to assign a probability to every event in the futures market. They use many strategies to do this, and the process can be technical and objective or subjective and involve a lot of guesswork. This provides opportunities for bettors to find value. If an NFL team has implied odds of 15% to win the Super Bowl, but you give them a 20% chance, then there is value in betting that team in the futures market.
Strategy for NFL Futures
There are so many different ways to attack the futures market. The futures market allows you to find edges in areas that single-game betting does not. It is important to assign probabilities to what you are betting on and compare them to the implied probabilities the futures market dictates. Whether that is simply just using your own intuition, having your own power ratings numbers, or creating a model to determine the probability of events occurring, it is vital to do so.
Let’s say that before the season, an NFL team is +525 to win the Super Bowl.
The implied odds of that is 16%. If you give that team just a 20% chance of winning the Super Bowl, then there is some value in betting on them. If you give them just a 12% chance, then you may want to look to bet a different team in that market. Futures markets often have heavy juice, so there may be no value at all, but if you consistently make futures bets with positive expected value, you will win in the long run.
Another strategy for betting on NFL futures is by hedging. If you placed a bet on a team to win the Super Bowl at +500, you can hedge that bet throughout the playoffs and into the Super Bowl. If you have a Super Bowl ticket at +500, you could hedge that bet by betting the opposing team’s moneyline, ensuring you win regardless of the game’s outcome.
Projections are also a key to betting on futures markets. Creating or finding season-long player projections and comparing them to market numbers can be a highly profitable strategy. Betting the unders is usually the way to go in this market, as sportsbooks’ numbers are often inflated by bettors’ hunger to go over on their favorite players. These markets are also not as heavily bet as others, so they aren’t as sharp, which makes it easier to find value.
Another thing to keep in mind when betting on futures is tail outcomes. These outcomes deviate greatly from the mean projection.
An example of this in the NFL is the Urban Meyer era in Jacksonville. The mean projection for Meyer and Jacksonville heading into the 2021 NFL season was a 6.5-win team with around a 10% chance of winning the AFC South. Everyone knew the Jaguars were a team depleted of talent, but there were question marks about how Meyer and Trevor Lawrence would transition to the NFL.
There were many ways you could’ve found value on the Jaguars in the futures market by keeping tail outcomes in mind. The Jaguars were a trendy pick to win the AFC South at +1000, and that number dropped down to around +700 by the time the season started. With a high-upside quarterback and a unique scheme and approach from their coach, the Jaguars had the high-end potential to surprise and win a weak AFC South. As we all saw in 2021, the worst possible Jaguars outcome actually hit. Trevor Lawrence did not find immediate success, and the college coach they brought in was an absolute disaster who did not fit the NFL at all.
You could’ve bet on the Jaguars’ low-end projection by wagering on the Jaguars to get the first overall pick at +500, and Urban Meyer to be the first coach fired at +3000. You could’ve also bet on their high-end projection by betting the Jaguars +1000 to win the AFC South and Urban Meyer +5000 to win coach of the year. With such a high payout for those bets, it’s worth keeping teams with a wide range of outcomes in mind and taking advantage of their tail outcomes.
Regardless of your betting experience, our How To Bet and Sports Betting Strategy and Advice pages are for you. You can get started with our 101 section - including How to Bet on Sports - or head to more advanced strategy - like 10 Tips to Become a Sharper Sports Bettor - to learn more.