A comprehensive guide to Football Betting in Canada
Sports betting in Canada is at its peak every February for Super Bowl. This is football’s most-watched game, and as more and more people tune in, the volume of bets processed sky-rockets, creating a frenzy in the sportsbook. Football odds are posted as soon as the matchup is established, and they fluctuate based on incoming action from the betting public.
But Super Bowl is just a one-day event. To keep football betting fans satisfied year-round, there are many other ways to bet on football in our sportsbook. The NFL season runs from September to February, a similar schedule to college football, which culminates with the College Football Playoff in January. CFL makes it possible to bet on football in the summer, as it runs from June to November. Each league has the same betting markets, including moneyline, spread, totals, futures, parlays, and live betting. We’ll explain how they all work in this guide.
NFL Betting
The biggest online football betting market is with NFL—even in Canada. This is where you can bet on hugely popular franchises, like the Dallas Cowboys, Green Bay Packers and New England Patriots. Fan loyalty is strong in the NFL; every preseason fans enjoy predicting how their favourite team’s season will fare by betting on team win totals. The NFL odds board offers over/under style betting for this popular market.
During the season, you can bet on football games every week. Each game has a moneyline, point spread (and alternates) and total as the straight bet options. Once the games finish, bets are settled. Football bets ramp up as the playoffs progress and reach a season-high when the Super Bowl odds are released after the Conference Championships. This is when props take centre-stage with the masses.
College Football Betting
College football is huge in the US and getting bigger north of the border. These are the future stars of the NFL, so it’s fun to watch them at an early stage and see them develop. College football betting is open in our sportsbook every week during the regular season and ramps up for the College Football Playoff.
Just like with the NFL odds, college football odds feature point spreads (and alternates), moneylines, and totals for the typical selection of straight football bets. You can parlay the total and the moneyline or spread for a bigger payout than what’s possible with single bets.
You’ll get this same suite of football betting odds when the College Football Playoff rolls around at the end of the season. This is a fun time to watch and bet on games. Bowl games happen around New Year’s Eve, and the final is in early January.
CFL Betting
Canada’s professional football league has been running since 1958 and currently has nine teams based in various cities across the country. The regular season starts in June and runs through to November when the playoffs begin. A popular event every September is the Labour Day Classic that pits two rivals against each other in a home-and-home series.
For those who like to bet on football games, CFL betting is open for all regular season games and include the typical spreads, moneylines and totals on the CFL football odds board. CFL odds do fluctuate based on action, but the odds you take at the time of your bet are the ones used to determine payouts.
The top team from the East and West divisional rounds battle in late November in the Grey Cup championship game. Grey Cup odds and props are posted for the single-game event.
How to Bet on Football
There are lots of different approaches when learning how to bet on football, but the easiest way to start is with straight bets on the football lines. These include the spread, moneyline and totals. Pick the team you want on the spread or moneyline as the primary bet. Then, decide if you think the total points scored in the game will be over or under the posted number. You can parlay the total with either the moneyline or spread for an even bigger payout.
Futures are part of a different football betting strategy. This is where you bet on a long-term event that will be resolved at the end of the regular season, or in the playoffs. The most popular futures football bets are the championship ones.
Playoff football brings forth a wave of prop bets that are not based on game outcomes. These let you put down money on player stats, team stats, or other achievements.
Different Football Bets
Football betting online is easy here. We have a Football page with football lines for NFL, college football and CFL. Each league has subsections for futures, gamelines, props and regular season win totals, making it easy to filter through the hundreds of football odds posted at any one time.
The futures section has all of the long-term football bets, while the standard gamelines offer straight bets for the week’s upcoming games. Props are all on the same tab and offer unique side bets such as whether or not a team will make the playoffs. Each type of bet is formatted a specific way, as you’ll see in the coming sections.
Moneylines
The easiest way to bet on football is through the moneyline. This lets you pick a team to win in a game, and if they win, you win. The amount you win is based on the odds displayed at the time you placed the football bets.
- Calgary Stampeders +265
- Montreal Alouettes -330
In this CFL example, the Alouettes are -330 home favourites on the moneyline, as you can see by their negative American odds. Betting $330 on them would yield a $100 payout if they won. Alternatively, you could take the +265 underdog Stampeders and win $265 off of a $100 bet. There’s always better value with the underdog on the moneyline.
Football Spreads
A popular option with the football betting crowd, football spreads use a point margin to create balance between two teams. The favourite must win by a certain number of points to cover the point spread, while the underdog can lose within that margin. We’ll look at an example of spread betting on football to illustrate.
- Jacksonville Jaguars +3.0
- Miami Dolphins -3.0
The Dolphins are 3-point favourites on the football odds board, so a Dolphins bet would pay if they won by 4 or more points. If the Jags lost by fewer than 3 points, they’d cover. If the Dolphins won by exactly 3 points, the result is a push.
Teaser Betting
Everyone loves the excitement of parlays, but the risk can be a bit high for some of the online football betting community. Teasers offer a solution. They reduce risk in exchange for a slightly smaller payout. If that sounds like a good trade-off to you, then teasers should be added to your betting arsenal.
Teasers can be applied to football spreads and totals in a parlay, and come in the form of 6, 6.5, 7, 8 or 9-point modifications. If you were to apply a 6-point teaser to a parlay with a 7.5-point favourite and 47.5-point under, the point spread would decrease to -1.5 and the total would go up to 53.5.
Robin Round Bets
Round robins are a type of hedge bet that’s less risk than a traditional parlay when betting on football. With parlays, a single loss kills the parlay, but not with a round robin.
With a round robin, football spreads are placed in multiple combinations of small parlays. The parlays can include odds for point spread, moneyline and totals bets. For example:
- New England Patriots +2.5
- Seattle Seahawks -3.0
- Jacksonville Jaguars +4.0
To round robin these point spread picks, our software will turn them into three two-team parlays; winning two would result in a payout.
- First Parlay: New England Patriots +2.5, Seattle Seahawks -3.0
- Second Parlay: New England Patriots +2.5, Jacksonville Jaguars +4.0
- Third Parlay: Seattle Seahawks -3.0, Jacksonville Jaguars +4.0
Parlay Bets
With football bets, the biggest payouts come from parlay bets. These combo-style bets let you group together 2 to 12 picks into one mega bet. This way, you get paid exponentially instead of individually for each bet. To get paid with a parlay, all of your picks in the parlay must win; if there’s a loss, the parlay is deemed a loss.
Losing by a single pick is not fun, so to lessen the blow, we offer parlay insurance. Anytime you place a 5+ selection parlay and lose by one, a $100 bonus bet is sent your way to bet on football again.
Buying Points
While teasers shift parlay bets, buying points shifts single bets by a half point. These can only be used to turn fractional spreads to whole numbers. As a result, it won’t turn a loss into a win, but it will turn it into a push, which would get you back your bet. We’ll illustrate with an example of buying points when betting on football.
- Kansas City Chiefs -3.5
- San Francisco 49ers +3.5
If you were to bet the Chiefs as 3.5-point favourites, you could buy a half point to shift the spread to -3.0. Then if the Chiefs beat the 49ers by exactly three points, your bet would be deemed a push instead of a loss.
Total Betting
Also known as the over-under, total bets let you wager on the total number of points scored in a game. The sportsbook posts a number pre-game, and the betting public decides if they think the actual total will go over that number or under. A typical total for a football bet could look like this:
- Arizona Cardinals O 47.5 (-110)
- Buffalo Bills U 47.5 (-110)
The teams don’t matter in this style of bet, just the ‘O,’ which is for over, and the ‘U,’ which is for under. The total is 47.5 points with a standard -110 vigorish for either bet, meaning you’d win $100 on a $110 bet.
Futures Bets
Any bets that are resolved at a future date are considered future bets. The most popular future football bets in our sportsbook are the Super Bowl ones that are available year-round. Each team has a set of odds, and when they’re eliminated from contention, they’re removed from the odds board.
On top of championship odds, there are futures for the conference winners, division winners, and team futures, such as season wins and odds to make the playoffs. Future bets are tied up until the event plays out.
Prop Betting
Prop bets are a fun add-on that spices up the betting experience. These have nothing to do with which team wins a game; they’re based on tangential events, or achievements of players or teams. An example of a popular Super Bowl prop is the coin toss at the start of the game. When casual fans bet on football for Super Bowl Sunday, they like to start with who wins the coin toss, and whether it will be heads or tails. It’s a fun way to kick off the action before the game even starts.
Football Betting Tips
To improve your odds of landing a payout in the sportsbook, you can incorporate football betting tips into your approach.
With all sports betting, it’s important to know how the sportsbook works in conjunction with the betting public. Sportsbooks are always looking to balance the action between both sides of a bet; this reduces the sportsbook’s risk of exposure. When one side gets lots of action, the football lines shift to attract more action on the less popular side. You can use this to your advantage.
When a big market team is featured on the football odds board, there will likely be a lot of bets coming in from its fanbase. If you want to bet on that team, your best chance of getting good value will be to bet early. You can also act in reverse for small market teams that have a higher chance of seeing their lines increase with value closer to kickoff.