What is juice in betting?
Juice, also called vig or vigorish, is the commission a sportsbook builds into its odds, most visibly in the standard -110 price where you must stake $110 to win $100.
A sportsbook doesn’t charge an entry fee. It charges through the odds. Juice is the American word for that charge, along with “vig”, short for vigorish. UK bettors call it the margin or the overround. Different words for the same thing.
Example
An NFL point spread is a near coin flip, so a fair price would be +100 on each side: bet $100 to win $100. Instead, both sides are listed at −110: bet $110 to win $100.
Say one person takes each side for $110:
- The book collects $220.
- It pays the winner $210 (the $110 stake plus $100 profit).
- It keeps $10. That’s the juice.
What it means for you: at −110 the implied probability is 110 ÷ 210 = 52.4%. You need to win more than 52.4% of your bets just to break even. Win exactly half and you slowly go broke.
| Price on each side | Break-even win rate |
|---|---|
| +100 (no juice) | 50.0% |
| −105 (reduced juice) | 51.2% |
| −110 (standard) | 52.4% |
| −115 | 53.5% |
Watch out
- Juice isn’t always −110. Books shade one side to −115 or −120 instead of moving the spread. Those few cents matter over a season.
- It hides best in big menus. Parlays, same game parlays, props and futures usually carry much more juice than a plain spread or total.
- Shop around. Getting −105 where others offer −110 lowers your break-even rate by more than a full percentage point. Having accounts at two or three licensed books and taking the best price is the simplest improvement most bettors can make.
You can’t avoid juice. You can avoid paying more of it than you need to.