HOW TO BET ON NFL at Bodog

There’s no question that football betting is king here in North America. The NFL odds page is always the busiest place here at Bodog Sportsbook, with hundreds of different ways to bet on every single NFL game – not to mention Same Game Parlays, futures bets on the next Super Bowl winner, and much more. Bodog even has sports live odds during each game on the schedule, so you can keep on betting from kick-off to the final gun. And the excitement only grows as we move from exhibition games to the regular season and then the playoffs, with each round building in anticipation until the Super Bowl odds finally hit the board.

Bodog even has sports live odds during each game on the schedule, so you can keep on betting from kick-off to the final gun. And the excitement only grows as we move from exhibition games to the regular season and then the playoffs, with each round building in anticipation until the Super Bowl odds finally hit the board.

We’ll show you how easy it is to read the NFL lines at Bodog and get your money down on all of your favourite football teams and players – while making some free bonus cash along the way.

Sports Welcome Bonus and Promotions for NFL Fans in Canada

Not only is Bodog your No. 1 source for NFL betting in Canada, we’ve also got the most generous welcome bonuses in the business. For example, all new players are eligible to claim our 100% Sports Bonus; we’ll match your opening deposit dollar-for-dollar, giving you up to $400 in bonus cash – plus 50 Free Spins on the Gods of Luxor slot game at Bodog Casino.

To make the best NFL bets in Canada even better, Bodog is also proud to offer Parlay Protection for all of our players. If you place a parlay with 5+ selections (NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB and MMA are all included), and you get just one pick wrong, we’ll give you $100 back in bonus bets. Find out more about all our great bonuses and perks at Bodog by visiting our Promotions page.

Favourite NFL Betting Options for Bodog Bettors

With so many different sports betting options at your fingertips, figuring out where to start can be a bit daunting. You’ve got 32 different teams you can bet on, including popular favourites in Canada like the Kansas City Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles, Buffalo Bills, Detroit Lions and San Francisco 49ers. You can also bet on how well the individual players perform; superstar quarterbacks like Patrick Mahomes (Kansas City) and Jared Goff (Detroit) are on the NFL odds board at Bodog, as are wide receivers CeeDee Lamb (Dallas Cowboys), Tyreek Hill (Miami Dolphins) and Stefon Diggs (Houston Texans), running backs Derrick Henry (Baltimore Ravens), Jahmyr Gibbs (Detroit) and Christian McCaffrey (San Francisco), and tight end Travis Kelce (Kansas City).

Then you have all of the different types of NFL bets here at Bodog. Front and centre on the menu are those NFL point spreads (including alternate spreads), moneylines and totals (including individual team totals), with a healthy serving of prop bets featuring your favourite players in action, like Anytime Touchdown Scorer. We’ll break down all of these different bet types for you, so you can make smarter bets at Bodog and enjoy the great game of football even more than you already do.

How to Bet on NFL Games

Before you can bet on NFL games at Bodog Sportsbook, you need to set up your free Bodog account. It’s a simple one-page form that takes moments to fill out; once your identity is verified and you’re approved, you can make your initial deposit with us (don’t forget to claim your free 100% Sports Bonus) and start betting.

The next step in learning how to bet on games is to understand how each bet type works. Knowing a thing or two about football helps, but you can’t put together a winning NFL betting strategy unless you know about the bets you’re placing.

NFL Best Bets

NFL Best Bets

As a general rule in NFL betting, you’ll find two different kinds of wagers on the NFL odds board at Bodog: standard “straight” bets and exotics. The straight bets are the three traditional wagers in football: point spread, moneyline and total. Exotics cover all other types, including those player and team props that football fans are putting in their NFL best bets every week. Here’s the rundown on every single bet type we have at Bodog.

NFL Moneyline Bets

The NFL moneyline is the original way to bet on America’s top football league – just pick which team will win straight-up. By default, NFL moneyline odds at Bodog are expressed using the “American odds” format, which looks something like this:

  • San Francisco –125
  • Kansas City +115

This was the moneyline for Super Bowl LVIII between the 49ers and Kansas City. The odds show you how much each team would have paid out: $115 for every $100 wagered on KC, and $100 for every $125 wagered on San Fran. If you prefer, you can toggle from American odds to fractional or decimal odds and back again at your leisure when you surf the NFL lines at Bodog.

NFL Spreads Betting

Gambling on football really took off in the 1940s when people started making NFL point spread picks. This is still the most popular wager on the NFL odds list. Instead of winning straight-up, the favoured team has to win by more than a certain number of points to cover the NFL spread and pay out.

Here’s how the NFL point spread for Super Bowl LVIII looked at Bodog:

  • San Francisco –2 (–105)
  • Kansas City +2 (–105)

Again, the Niners were the favourite in this matchup; if they had won by more than two points, they would have paid out at –105, or $100 for every $105 wagered. But it was Kansas City winning 25-22, with the same payout you see in parentheses next to their name. Note: If San Francisco had won by exactly two points, all bets would have been returned.

Teaser Betting at NFL

Let’s move away from straight bets for a moment and dive into the exotics. Teasers are a kind of parlay bet (more on that in a moment) where you combine several NFL bets against the spread, and you move each NFL spread by a certain number of points: 6, 6.5, 7, 8 or 9. This makes it easier for each of your picks to cover the spread, so your entire bet is more likely to cash in – which makes teasers a popular choice on the NFL lines at Bodog.

Robin Round Bets

Round robin bets are another great way to generate multiple NFL bets against the spread. Let’s say you like the following three teams to cover the spread:

  • Detroit Lions +4
  • Buffalo Bills –7.5
  • Seattle Seahawks –2.5

You could place a 3-team parlay with these NFL odds – or you could place three different 2-team parlays:

  • Detroit +4
  • Buffalo –7.5
  • Detroit +4
  • Seattle –2.5
  • Buffalo –7.5
  • Seattle –2.5

The round robin betting option lets you take the NFL point spread in anywhere between three and eight games, and automatically create as many different parlays of between two and seven teams as the math allows. This can be a great way to squeeze betting value from every NFL spread pick you feel confident about.

NFL Parlay Bets

Now that you’ve already been introduced to NFL parlay bets in the form of teasers and round robins, you have the general idea when it comes to making picks and parlays on NFL games. Simply combine anywhere between 2 and 16 straight bets; the more “teams” (including totals, which we’ll get to shortly) you add to your NFL parlay picks, the more money you can win, up to the maximum payout of $500,000 at Bodog Sportsbook. But if you get even one pick wrong, the entire parlay loses – which is why you’ll definitely want our Parlay Protection on your side helping you beat the NFL odds.

Buying Points at NFL

If you like parlay bets, and teasers in particular, you can move the spread or total for any single game instead of a full combo by buying points at Bodog. For NFL games, you can buy 0.5, 1.0 or 1.5 points; every half-point you buy will cost you 10 “cents” in American odds, unless you’re moving off or onto a spread of seven points (15 cents) or three (25 cents). Here are the different ways you could have bought points for Super Bowl LVIII:

  • San Francisco –1.5 (–115)
  • San Francisco –1 (–125)

(Note: There are no spreads of –0.5 or +0.5 in football betting)

  • Kansas City +2.5 (–115)
  • Kansas City +3 (–140)
  • Kansas City +3.5 (–165)

It’s all about risk versus reward when you’re playing the NFL odds at Bodog, so consider buying points when you think that hedging your bet is the right move.

NFL Over Under Betting

Okay, now let’s circle back to the last of our three straight wagers: total bets, also known as NFL over/under bets. This is where you bet on whether the two teams will combine to score Over or Under the posted number of points on the odds board – like at Super Bowl LVIII:

  • San Francisco O 47 (+100)
  • Kansas City U 47 (–110)

The under is traditionally listed at the bottom in North American sports betting, next to the home team; we’ve included the uppercase “O” and “U” for Over and Under to make reading the NFL lines at Bodog a little easier. As fate would have it, the two teams at Super Bowl LVIII scored exactly 47 points, so this total was a push.

NFL Futures Bets

Instead of betting on a single NFL game, you can bet on any future result – like who will win the next Super Bowl – by visiting the NFL futures page at Bodog’s sports betting page. NFL future bets traditionally include conference and division champions as well as league champions. Other popular bets like Season Wins Total and To Make the Playoffs are often placed in this category on the NFL odds board.

NFL Prop Bets

Proposition bets, or NFL prop bets for short, are the hottest commodity on the NFL lines at Bodog. This is where you can bet on the accomplishments of individual players as well as teams. The most popular NFL player props include things such as how many passing yards Patrick Mahomes will rack up in his next start. NFL prop bets like which team will score first also do big business every Sunday.

NFL Draft, Division and Playoff Betting

The more you know about the structure of the league itself, the more command you’ll have over the NFL odds. For example, the league is divided into two conferences of four divisions apiece, each with four teams:

  • AFC East, AFC North, AFC South, AFC West
  • NFC East, NFC North, NFC South, NFC West

NFL divisional odds are posted year-round on the futures market at Bodog. The more popular divisions like the NFC East will get plenty of attention, but the betting value is often with the less heralded teams in the AFC South.

Draft betting at Bodog works much the same way. Every year, the odds are posted for which players will be selected first overall, second overall, and so on. Quarterbacks are the star players, but do they have as much betting value as safeties or offensive linemen?

Then you have the NFL odds to make the playoffs. The more popular a team is, the more likely they’re a winning team, but look for the NFL playoff odds for losing teams who happen to be on the rise – maybe they’ve had a positive change in ownership or elsewhere in the front office.

NFL Awards Odds

Last, but certainly not least, we have the NFL awards odds at Bodog Sportsbook. Every year, the NFL hands out trophies for the league’s top performers. Here are some of the major awards to watch out for on the NFL lines at Bodog, and keep checking in with us for the latest NFL odds and analysis as we get ready for another great year of football.

  • Vince Lombardi Trophy: This iconic silver trophy goes to the winner of the annual Super Bowl, pitting the top teams from the AFC and NFC.
  • Most Valuable Player: As chosen by members of the Associated Press, the MVP award goes to the player judged to be most valuable in the league.
  • Rookie of the Year: Another AP award, given to that season’s top rookie performers – one on offence, and the other on defence.
  • Super Bowl MVP: The Pete Rozelle Trophy is awarded to the top performer at the Super Bowl, as chosen by fan vote and a panel of 16 writers and broadcasters.
  • Coach of the Year: Given by the AP to that season’s best coach; Assistant Coach of the Year has also been awarded since 2014.