American Sports: Terminology and Common Matched Betting Offers

Touchdown! Home Run! 3 pointer!

The 3 most common phrases heard in American sports, but what are they and what are the other meanings and phrases for American sports betting? American sports offers have been around for quite a while, but many people are put off by them due to the wording used.

Once we can understand and turn these around to ways that we know then these offers from the likes of 888 and Paddy Power are absolutely great profit makers (especially when the European football season ends). So lets start with those 3 most common phrases and what they mean.

Common American Sports Phrases

Touchdown

A touchdown is essential the same as a try in Rugby, where the attacking player catches or carries the ball into the Endzone (this is the scoring area at each end of the pitch) and is worth 6 points. The team then has a chance to add further points to this with a conversion (kicking the ball between the posts) for 1 point or carrying or catching the ball in the endzone again for 2points.

Home Run

A Home Run is a Baseball term and is most often scored when the ball is hit over the outfield wall between the foul poles before it touches the ground and without being caught or deflected back onto the field by a fielder. The ball is hit in such a way that the batter is able to circle the bases and reach back to where he hit the ball from in one play without any errors being committed by the defensive team.

3 pointer

A  3 pointer, is a goal in a Basketball game made from beyond the three-point line, a designated arc surrounding the basket. A successful attempt is worth three points, in contrast to the two points awarded for field goals made within the three-point line and the one point for each made free throw.

Betting Terminology

The USA uses different terminology to mean the same thing as we do when it comes to betting, but these can be a bit confusing, spreads and money line are the main 2:

Money line for all intents and purposes is just for a team to win the match including overtime. The figures for Money line betting can be confusing though with negatives and positives shown (this doesn’t normally happen with UK bookmakers as they change the odds over to the correct decimals that we use). All the Negatives and positives mean is a Negative is odds below evens and positives odds above.

Spreads are really common, as this is the amount the team will win or lose by. It is like giving the other team an X amount of points head start or for a team to have Y points disadvantage.

Types of offers and how to profit from them

888 are by far the best UK bookmaker for American sports and has offers running throughout the seasons. The big advantage of this is that the NFL (American Football runs from September to February and the NBA (basketball) runs from October to April for the regular season and then has playoffs that finish in June. MLB (baseball) Runs from April to October. So we have the whole 12 months of the year covered one way or another.

The offers from 888 are really regular, and with games happening across the weeks on different days they give us a lot of scope to use them. The best offer from 888 is the £20 NFL Bet Builder offer, which is a £20 risk free shot as it is a £20 free bet if your Bet Builder loses. As there are games that start on a Sunday and on a Monday we can normally do this offer twice as they run it for both days.

The lays for these can be a bit awkward though, so many people advantage play them (no lay) and over time we will see a profit from them as the free bets can be used on any sport so we can lay these off and make back about £15 we are only risking £5 of our own money as a qualifying loss.

The easiest back and lay to do is winner and over x points as this is a premade market on Smarkets so we can use the bonus lock in calculator set to losses and 75% retention on the free bet, and then if win or lose we will make a guaranteed profit. You can find out more here. 

Betfred do a similar offer but is only 50% of your stake back (up to £5 back as a Free bet.) and as these are usually pre-built Pick Your Punts it is almost nigh on impossible to lay them so we have to advantage play them.

888 also run an NBA offer which is place a Bet of £10 on the NBA and get a £10 free bet. So a really nice and easy bet and get offer.

We also have an American sports thread on our forum. The list of offers is quite substantial and with a simple American sports search on the forum, many offers are listed.

So in summary the offers are there for to us make continual profits, all be it with slightly different wordings, all year round and backing a player to score a home run or touchdown can be just as lucrative as Mo Salah scoring a penalty in the last minute for Liverpool.

If any further assistance is required with terminology, then please do not hesitate to contact support via Live Chat or Email.