Juice / Vigorish (Vig)
The bookmaker's commission on each wager, embedded directly in the odds rather than charged separately.
Juice, also called vigorish or simply the vig, is the commission a sportsbook bakes into every wager it accepts. It never appears as a separate line item on your slip. Instead, it sits inside the odds, ensuring the bookmaker books revenue no matter which side prevails. The juice is the principal mechanism by which sportsbooks turn a profit and remain solvent.
The canonical example shows up in standard point spread and totals betting, where both sides are priced at -110. At that price, a bettor risks $110 to win $100. If two bettors stake equal amounts on opposing sides, the book takes in $220 in total stakes but pays out only $210 to the winner ($110 stake plus $100 profit). The leftover $10 — about 4.55% of the total handle — is the bookmaker’s margin.
In a perfectly efficient market carrying no juice, both sides of a 50/50 proposition would price at +100 (even money). The spread between the actual posted odds and those fair odds is the cost of placing the bet.
Example
A sportsbook offers a college basketball spread with Team A at -5.5 (-110) and Team B at +5.5 (-110). You bet $110 on Team A. If Team A covers, you win $100 in profit. If you lose, the book keeps your $110. Meanwhile, another bettor wagered $110 on Team B at the same odds. The sportsbook holds $220 total and will pay $210 to whichever bettor wins, keeping a $10 margin.
If the same market were offered at -105 on each side, you would only need to wager $105 to win $100, meaning the vig is lower and the bet is cheaper for the bettor.
Key Points
- Lower juice is better for bettors: Hunting for reduced-juice lines (such as -105 instead of -110) saves money over time and meaningfully lifts long-term profitability.
- Juice varies by market and sport: Mainstream markets like NFL spreads typically run tighter juice than niche markets or prop bets, where the vig can be considerably higher.
- The vig is not the same as the hold: Juice describes the margin on a single side, while the hold is the overall percentage the sportsbook keeps from the total wagered on a market.
- Implied probabilities reveal the vig: Convert the odds for both sides of a market to implied probabilities, and any sum above 100% exposes the total overround — the bookmaker’s combined margin across the market.