Juice / Vigorish (Vig)

Juice – also called vigorish or just the vig – is the built-in commission a sportsbook charges for taking your bet. It never shows up as a separate line item on your slip. Instead, it’s embedded directly in the odds, so the book earns no matter which side cashes. Juice is the main engine behind sportsbook profit and the reason they stay in business.

The textbook example of juice shows up in standard spread and totals betting, where both sides sit at -110. At that price, you risk $110 to win $100. If two bettors stake equal amounts on opposite sides, the book pulls in $220 in total but pays out only $210 to the winner ($110 stake plus $100 profit). The leftover $10 – roughly 4.55% of the total handle – is the bookmaker’s margin.

In a perfectly efficient market with zero juice, both sides of a 50/50 proposition would sit at +100 (even money). The gap between the odds actually offered and those fair odds is the cost of placing the bet.

Example

A sportsbook posts a college basketball spread with Team A at -5.5 (-110) and Team B at +5.5 (-110). You bet $110 on Team A. If Team A covers, you win $100 in profit. If it loses, the book keeps your $110. Meanwhile another bettor put $110 on Team B at the same price. The book holds $220 total and pays $210 to whoever wins, banking a $10 margin.

If that same market were offered at -105 a side, you’d only need to stake $105 to win $100 – lower vig, and a cheaper bet for you.

Key Points

• Lower juice is better for bettors: Hunting for reduced-juice lines (like -105 instead of -110) saves money over time and meaningfully lifts long-term profitability.
• Juice varies by market and sport: Mainstream markets like NFL spreads usually run tighter juice than niche markets or props, where the vig can climb a lot higher.
• The vig is not the same as the hold: Juice is the margin on a single side, while the hold is the overall percentage the book keeps from everything wagered on a market.
• Implied probabilities reveal the vig: Convert both sides of a market to implied probabilities, and when they total more than 100%, the excess is the overround – the book’s combined margin across the market.