What Is Vig? How Sportsbooks Actually Make Money
The vig is the margin built into every price a sportsbook offers. It is not a fee you can see on a receipt — it is the reason a coin flip is priced at −110 instead of +100, and it is the single largest cost any bettor pays.
10 min read
The short answer
- Vig (or juice) is the sportsbook’s margin, built into the odds rather than charged separately.
- It is why the two sides of a market imply more than 100% probability between them.
- A standard −110 / −110 market carries a 4.76% overround, and the book keeps 4.55% of money staked.
- Sharper books price the same market at −105 / −105: a 2.44% overround, and a 2.38% hold.
- The vig is why break-even is 52.38% and not 50%. Losing 47.62% of the time still loses you money.
- Removing the vig proportionally gives the “fair” price — the market’s real opinion with the margin taken out.
What vig actually is
A sportsbook is not gambling against you, at least not by design. It is selling a product with a markup, and the markup is hidden inside the price. That markup is the vigorish — vig for short, juice in American usage, overround or margin elsewhere.
Take a genuine coin flip. Fair odds are +100 on each side: risk $100 to win $100. A sportsbook offering that market makes nothing, so it does not offer it. It offers −110 on both sides instead. You still risk $100, but now you only win about $91.
Balance the book — equal money on each side — and the arithmetic is fixed. Two bettors stake $110 each, $220 total. One wins and is paid $210. The book keeps $10, whatever happens, with no opinion about the outcome at all.
Measuring it: overround and hold
Convert every price in a market to its implied probability and add them up. A market with no margin totals exactly 100%. Every real market totals more.
Team A −110 → 52.38%
Team B −110 → 52.38%
───────
104.76% overround = 4.76%The excess over 100% is the overround.
But 4.76% is not what the book keeps. It keeps $10 out of $220 staked, which is 4.55%. The difference is the denominator: the overround divides the excess by 1, while the hold divides it by the market total.
overround = (sum of implied probabilities) − 1 hold = overround / (sum of implied probabilities) −110 / −110 → overround 4.76%, hold 4.55%
Both are called “the vig” in conversation. The hold is the one that describes the book’s actual take on money staked.
The vig calculator reports both for any market, two-way or many-way.
What it costs you
Margins vary more than most bettors realise, and the difference compounds over a season rather than a bet.
| Market | Overround | Hold | Break-even win rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| −105 / −105 | 2.44% | 2.38% | 51.22% |
| −110 / −110 | 4.76% | 4.55% | 52.38% |
| −120 / +100 | 4.55% | 4.35% | 54.55% on the favourite |
| −115 / −115 | 6.98% | 6.52% | 53.49% |
The gap between −110 and −105 looks trivial and is not. Betting 500 times at $100 with a genuine 52% win rate, you lose $364 at −110 and make $762 at −105. Identical bets, identical results, opposite outcomes — the only variable is the price you paid. That is the entire case for line shopping.
Removing the vig to find the fair price
The market’s opinion is genuinely useful information — sportsbook prices are among the best public predictors there are. But you have to take the markup off before reading them, or every probability you extract is inflated.
The standard method scales the implied probabilities down proportionally until they sum to 1:
fair probability = implied / (sum of all implied) −120 / +100 → 54.55% and 50.00%, total 104.55% 54.55 / 104.55 = 52.17% fair price −109 50.00 / 104.55 = 47.83% fair price +109
Proportional (multiplicative) removal. It is the standard method and the one the calculator uses.
So a market showing −120 is really saying 52.17%, not 54.55%. Bet it believing you need 54.55% and you have set the bar two and a half points too high. The no-vig calculator does this for any market, and the fair number it produces is the benchmark every value calculation on this site compares against.
Where the vig is highest
Margin is not uniform across a sportsbook. It is thinnest where the money is sharpest and thickest where it is not.
- Sides and totals in major leagues carry the least — the standard −110, and better at reduced-juice books. These markets take the most money and the most informed money.
- Player props and alternate lines carry more, often several times more, because they are lower-limit, lower-liquidity and harder to price.
- Parlays compound it. Each leg carries its own margin and they multiply — which is why the parlay guide is its own subject.
- Futures and outright markets are the most expensive on the board. A 30-team championship market can total 120% or more across all outcomes.
- Exchanges replace vig with commission on net winnings, which is a different shape of cost — the commission calculator converts it to a comparable price.
Common questions
- What is vig in sports betting?
- Vig — short for vigorish, also called juice — is the sportsbook’s margin, built into the odds rather than charged as a separate fee. It is why a coin flip is priced at −110 on both sides instead of +100, and why the implied probabilities of a market add up to more than 100%.
- How much vig is normal?
- A standard point spread or total is −110 on both sides: a 4.76% overround and a 4.55% hold. Reduced-juice books price the same market at −105, cutting the hold to 2.38%. Player props, parlays and futures carry considerably more.
- What is the difference between overround and hold?
- Overround is how far the implied probabilities exceed 100%. Hold is that excess as a share of total money staked. A −110 / −110 market has a 4.76% overround and a 4.55% hold. Both get called “the vig”; hold is the book’s actual take.
- How do I remove the vig from odds?
- Convert every price to an implied probability, add them, then divide each one by that total. A −120 / +100 market implies 54.55% and 50.00% for a total of 104.55%, so the fair probabilities are 52.17% and 47.83%.
- Can you beat the vig?
- Only by finding prices whose implied probability is lower than the true probability by more than the margin — or by paying less margin in the first place. Taking −105 instead of −110 on bets you were making anyway is the most reliable way to reduce it.