Juice / Vigorish (Vig)

Juice — also called vigorish, or “vig” — is the cut a sportsbook builds into the odds on both sides of a bet. It’s not a separate fee you see on a receipt; it’s baked directly into the price, which is why so many bettors never notice it. If a coin-flip game paid true 50/50 odds, both sides would be +100. Instead you almost always see something like -110 on both sides, or an uneven split like -120/+100. That gap between the “fair” price and the price you’re actually offered is the book’s built-in edge.

The mechanism is simple: a sportsbook doesn’t need to guess who’s going to win to make money. It needs to attract roughly balanced action on both sides of a bet, at odds that pay out less than true 50/50 odds would require. If it can do that, it collects money from the side that loses and pays out less than it collected from the side that won, and it keeps the difference no matter which team covers. Juice is how a book gets paid for taking on the bet in the first place.

You can measure vig by converting each side’s odds into an “implied probability” and adding them up. Fair odds on a coin flip would sum to exactly 100%. Any sportsbook price where the two implied probabilities add up to more than 100% has vig built in — and the amount over 100% is roughly the size of the cut.

Example

Say the Milwaukee Bucks are hosting the Indiana Pacers, and the book posts the point spread at Bucks -110 and Pacers -110 — a standard “even” line where both sides cost the same to bet.

To find the implied probability of a -110 price, use odds ÷ (odds + 100): 110 ÷ 210 = 0.5238, or 52.38%. Since both sides are priced at -110, both imply 52.38%. Add them together: 52.38% + 52.38% = 104.76%. That extra 4.76% over the 100% a true coin flip would require is the vig on this line. In practical terms, a bettor risking $110 to win $100 needs to win 52.38% of these bets just to break even — not 50%.

Now compare that to a lopsided line. Suppose a Yankees-Orioles run line comes out Yankees -120, Orioles +100, because the book expects slightly more money on the favorite. Implied probability on the Yankees: 120 ÷ 220 = 54.55%. Implied probability on the Orioles: 100 ÷ 200 = 50.00%. Add them: 104.55% total, so the vig here is 4.55% — close to the -110/-110 example, but not identical, because vig doesn’t have to be split evenly between the two sides.

Here’s where it actually costs you money. Imagine you bet $220 on the Yankees at -120 and, separately, a friend bets $200 on the Orioles at +100, and each of you does this every night for a season. If the Yankees and Orioles split games 50/50 over time, you’d win about half your $220 bets (profiting $183.33 each) and lose the other half (losing $220 each) — netting a small loss over time, even though the “true” outcome was a coin flip. Your friend on the Orioles side breaks even at a true 50%, since +100 pays even money. The book, meanwhile, collects the same total either way and pockets the spread between what it takes in and what it pays out. That spread is the vig showing up as real dollars.

Key Points

• Vig is a tax on every bet, win or lose: at -110, you need to win 52.38% of your bets against the spread just to break even long-term, not 50%. Ignore this and you’ll overestimate your real edge on any system or picks service.
• Lower juice means a lower bar to clear: a book offering -105 instead of -110 on the same game only requires about 51.22% winners to break even. Shopping for the best number on the same side of the same game is free money over a long enough sample.
• Vig isn’t always split evenly: books shade lines to balance action, like -120/+100 above, so don’t assume both sides carry identical juice — calculate the implied probability on each leg separately.
• Parlays compound the vig: stringing bets together multiplies the house’s edge on each leg, which is why the payout on a 4-team parlay is worse than what the “true” combined odds would suggest.
• Line movement can hide juice changes: a book can move a spread from -3 to -3.5 while quietly shifting the price from -110 to -115, keeping the vig high even though the number “moved” against the public.
• Reduced-juice or -105 markets exist for a reason: books use them to attract sharp, high-volume bettors who shop lines — using those markets consistently is one of the simplest ways to improve your long-run breakeven rate without picking a single extra winner.