MLB Home Runs Picks Today – Friday’s Best HR Props (4/10/2026)

Friday brings a welcoming MLB schedule to the table, rife with alluring MLB HR bets. It’s always important to factor weather, pitching, and park impact before laying your bets, while it’s often good to be restrictive as well.

Predicting MLB home runs isn’t easy, so if you’re piecing together a parlay, make sure you cap it at 3-4 picks max. Targeting them as individual bets is preferred, but I totally understand the desire to tap into that extra upside.

The goal is to give you three different MLB home run picks today, eyeing a relatively “safe” play that stands out, securing some value, and then also taking a chance at an attractive longshot bet.

Each MLB HR bet stands on its own, or you can group them together. I’ll hit you with a quick snapshot of today’s MLB home run picks, and then dive into why I like each one.

Quick MLB HR Picks for Friday

Here’s my shortlist of MLB HR picks for Friday. I will go into greater detail for each pick, while I’ll also offer a pivot play if you want to attack the same situation, but perhaps not that specific batter.

MLB home run bets are never going to be locks, but all of these picks are vetted and look fantastic on paper. Now they just need to deliver!

“Safe” HR Pick for Friday – Kyle Schwarber (+274)

I like all the Philadelphia Phillies lefties on Friday. They are at home in a hitter’s haven, as Citizens Bank Park ranks 3rd for home runs so far in 2026. This has always been a great park for scoring in general, and it can allow plenty of power.

Schwarber is historically an all-or-nothing bat, but that’s really the kind of guy you want when the set up is pristine. It certainly looks good for Friday, as the park factor checks out and we’re also looking at solid weather (66 degrees, 8 MPH wind blowing into center field) and a winnable matchup against Michael Soroka.

Soroka is a solid real-life pitcher, but his K rate plummets by over 20% from right to left this year. The sample size is small, but if we look at his power offerings from 2025, he was giving up a .184 ISO to left-handed bats, as well as a 48% hard hit rate.

Soroka can induce ground balls pretty well, but doing that against Schwarber won’t be easy. He gets the ball in the air 37% of the time and hits it extremely hard (78% hard hit rate). That’s harder than anyone else on the Phillies by 20%, while he also paces Philly with a disgusting .320 ISO.

There’s always the risk of Soroka walking him, forcing ground balls, or simply exploiting his 27% strikeout rate. But as far as “safe” home run calls go, Schwarber undeniably leads the way on Friday.

Pivot Pick: Shohei Ohtani (+190)

The price drops, but this pick may even be safer. I’ll break it down further with another bet I like just the same, but if you want a relatively safe MLB HR bet and don’t mind losing some value, bet on Ohtani to launch one into the stands today.

Friday’s Best Home Run Value Bet – Freddie Freeman (+410)

You can bet on Ohtani to dong pretty much daily, but the price is more appealing with Freddie Freeman. Shockingly enough, they’re tied with three long balls on the year, and they are obviously benefiting from the same exact situation tonight.

First, Freeman has strong power numbers. He owns a .200 ISO against right-handed hurlers. He’ll be facing a young pitcher in Kumar Rocker that got slapped around (.203 ISO) by lefties last year, and it’s just really unlikely he navigates his way through this entire lineup multiple times without letting one get by him.

Rocker is a solid talent, but his .392 wOBA and 62% hard hit rate allowed to the left side of the plate isn’t great. The Dodgers can throw quite a few dangerous lefties at him, and if he does manage to get by Ohtani and Kyle Tucker (+360), then I tend to think Freeman will be the one to get him.

There’s also Max Muncy (+324), but when looking at the matchup, hitter numbers, and the pricing, Freeman grades out as the more efficient bat with more alluring betting odds.

Oh, and Dodger Stadium ranks #1 for homers this year, and the wind is blowing out to right field at 10 miles per hour. Yeah, sign me up for that.

Pivot Pick: Muncy or Tucker

It’s a good day to stack Dodgers, it appears! Every day is probably a good day to load up on Los Angeles bats, truly. But the matchup, weather, park factor, and splits all look good across the board.

Longshot HR Pick for 4/10 – Owen Caissie (+720)

You know it’s a longshot bet when it’s a guy from the Miami Marlins. But hey, the fish get a big park upgrade at Comerica Park, which, by the way, happens to rank 12th for power in 2026.

The sample size is admittedly tiny, but this park was 10th in overall park factor last year and still ranked 16th over the course of last season. Not amazing, but with the wind blowing out to center field at 9 miles per hour, I’m willing to take on some risk.

At these odds, any risk is baked into the pricing, while Owen Caissie has shown a penchant for the long ball early with two home runs on his resume already. A former 2nd round draft pick, Caissie displayed solid power numbers in the minors the last few years, cranking out 19+ long balls in each of the past three seasons.

It’s fair to wonder if it’d translate to the majors, but so far the answer is a resounding “yes”. Caissie provides a blistering .224 ISO so far, and while he whiffs a ton (34%!), he tends to get the ball in the air, doesn’t take many walks, and has a 15.6% barrel rate.

Translation: this dude is going to play for power, and it’s either going to end in a beautiful long ball into the stands, or seeing him whiffing his way into oblivion.

I’m good for the dice role at this price, plus he’s facing a guy in Keider Montero that is far from elite. He sports a weak 13% whiff rate against left-handed pitching dating back to last year, where he also gave up a .229 ISO and a 47% hard hit rate.

Everything looks good here, folks. The power, the splits, the park; it’s all set up for Caissie to return some pretty glorious value.

Pivot Pick: Liam Hicks (+1120)

Hicks is also a Marlins bat we could take a stab at. He projects a bit less reliably than Caissie, but he’s in the same appealing matchup, and his odds are even more alluring. His power numbers are weaker, but he already has three long balls on the season, so we know he can swing a heavy stick.

Tips for Predicting MLB Home Runs

You have my top MLB HR picks for Friday, but you should also have the ammunition and insight you need to go find some winning bets on your own.

To do that, consider the following:

• Lean into Weather – Take advantage of hot and humid games and/or contests with the wind aggressively blowing out. Conversely, avoid colder games with the wind blowing in.
• Attack Bad Pitching – Be aggressive in going after weak starting pitchers and poor bullpens, but make sure you’re also specifically targeting guys who get hit hard, give up bad power numbers, and also tend to allow fly balls.
• Pay Mind to Splits – Instead of picking MLB home runs blindly, make sure you’re dissecting pitcher and batter splits. Anyone can hit a homer in any setting, but we want the odds in our favor – as well as the numbers.
• Consider Park Factor – The park your hitters are playing in is huge. Some ballparks are good for scoring, but not necessarily for home runs. Others are simply bad for both, and then things like matchups and weather can make it worse. If the park factor is weak for home runs, it’s best to just avoid betting on home runs in that park.

Betting on MLB Home Runs on Friday

My Top Friday MLB HR Pick: Kyle Schwarber (+274)

You can look at safe plays, values, or longshots. And truth be told, there are a lot more MLB home run picks to consider. For example, I love Kyle Schwarber to go yard as the #1 MLB HR bet for Friday, but Bryce Harper is arguably just as good of a bet.

Everything points to a Schwarber long ball, but we know that every single aspect can go perfectly, and an all-or-nothing bat like that can still go 0-4. Harper is a great pivot, while all Philadelphia Phillies look welcoming if you’re hunting MLB home runs today.

That’s where I’d be starting any MLB home run parlays, but you can use my analysis of today’s MLB HR picks – as well as my general tips – to find even more winning picks. Good luck!

How Sportsbooks Prepare for Massive Betting Events

Sportsbooks prepare for massive betting events by stress-testing their tech stack months in advance, building opening lines from proprietary models that blend historical data with live injury and weather feeds, staffing trading desks around the clock to chase line moves, and spreading exposure across hundreds of markets so no single outcome can blow up the book. When Americans wagered a record $1.76 billion on Super Bowl LX in February 2026 — a 27% jump from the prior year — operators had been preparing since the previous summer.

The public sees the final odds and the prop menu. What happens behind the curtain is a six-month choreography of data science, risk management, infrastructure scaling, and marketing spend that would look familiar to anyone who’s run a trading floor or a Black Friday retail launch. Here’s how the biggest US sportsbooks actually get ready for the nights when the whole country is betting at once.

The Months-Long Math Problem — Building the Opening Lines

Opening lines for the biggest events are set weeks before the public ever sees them, and the work starts with a pricing team that’s equal parts quant, sports nerd, and risk analyst. For the Super Bowl, the major books start modeling potential matchups as early as the conference championship round — and in some cases the preseason, when futures markets first open.

The people doing the work have a few different titles depending on the book — odds compiler, trader, pricing analyst, quant — but the job is the same: build a probability estimate for every market they’re going to hang, then adjust it as new information comes in. Modern pricing teams lean heavily on machine learning models that retrain on recent results and pull in non-obvious inputs like player biometric data, weather API feeds, referee tendencies, and even social media sentiment for injury news breaks.

Not every book builds its own lines from scratch. The industry operates on a two-tier hierarchy that most retail bettors never see. Market-making books — Pinnacle is the clearest example, though BetCris and Circa Sports play similar roles in the US market — set the initial lines that the rest of the industry copies. These sharp books actively want professional action because pro bettors help them find the true price faster. Retail-facing apps like DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM often start from a sharp book’s number and then shade the line based on their own customer book.

For a truly massive event, the opening line is almost a formality — the books know it’s going to move substantially once professional money and public action hit it. The real work is staying ahead of that movement without letting any one outcome become an unhedgeable liability.

Inside the Trading Desk on Game Day

On the day of a major event, sportsbook trading desks operate like high-frequency trading floors, with analysts monitoring dozens of markets in real time and software flagging any line that drifts outside its expected range. Big-event staffing doubles or triples the typical team — a regular NFL Sunday might have 15-20 traders on duty at a major US book, while Super Bowl Sunday can see 40+ across pricing, risk, live trading, and customer support.

Most of the action is automated. Pricing software adjusts lines thousands of times a second based on real-time market data, incoming bets, and signals from other books. Human traders get involved when something unusual happens: a sharp syndicate placing a coordinated series of wagers (a “steam move”), an injury scratch 90 minutes before kickoff, or a prop that’s drawing lopsided action far beyond what the model predicted. That’s when the pricing lead has to make a judgment call — move the line aggressively, reduce limits, or pull the market entirely.

Line movement is the most visible signal of what’s happening behind the scenes. Our breakdown of how starting pitchers move MLB betting lines gets into the mechanics of sport-specific line shifts, but the overall pattern is consistent across sports: small adjustments from public money, bigger jumps from sharp action, and the occasional steam move when multiple syndicates hit a number within minutes of each other.

• Public money moves: Small, gradual, often on favorites and overs. Books are happy to absorb this action and rarely make dramatic adjustments.
• Sharp money moves: Larger, faster, and often on numbers that haven’t been touched yet. Pricing teams respond within seconds.
• Steam moves: Coordinated action across multiple books. The first book to move sets the benchmark; the rest follow within 30-90 seconds.
• Reverse line movement: The line moves against the majority of public bets, usually meaning sharp money on the less popular side is outweighing the handle.

Risk Management — Balancing the Book (Or Choosing Not To)

The old textbook explanation is that sportsbooks try to balance their book — get equal action on both sides so they collect the vig regardless of outcome. That’s still partially true, but the modern approach is much more sophisticated, and on huge events it often means intentionally taking positions rather than hedging them away.

The reason is math. A perfectly balanced book guarantees a small, stable profit (typically 4-5% of handle on point spread markets). But on high-margin markets like same-game parlays, player props, and exotic prop menus, books can earn 15-25% of handle by letting their models’ edge play out. The Super Bowl is the extreme case: prop and same-game parlay exposure drove one of the most profitable single-game performances of the year for several operators in February 2026, largely because the books leaned into their model edge rather than laying off the action.

Exposure is managed across hundreds of individual markets rather than at the aggregate level. For Super Bowl LX, no single wager absorbed the bulk of the action — the handle was spread across moneylines, spreads, derivative bets, player props, prop parlays, and live betting. That fragmentation is deliberate. A book would rather have thousands of small liabilities across dozens of markets than one massive position on the game winner.

When exposure does get concentrated, the major books have a fallback: laying off action to other books or to liquidity providers. This used to be common for Vegas retail books and still happens in the regulated US market, though the scale is smaller than most people assume. Most of the laying off now goes to specialized B2B providers rather than book-to-book. And when a winning player gets large enough to matter, books often take the other direction — cutting their limits instead. We covered the details of that practice in why sportsbooks limit winning players, and it’s one of the industry’s most honest admissions that the modern book isn’t really trying to beat professionals — it’s trying to avoid them.

Scaling the Tech — 100,000 Bets a Minute

The single biggest operational challenge on a massive event day isn’t pricing — it’s keeping the platform online under a traffic load that can hit 10-20x a normal Sunday. OpenBet, one of the largest B2B sportsbook platforms in the world, recorded more than 100,000 bets per minute during the 2024 Grand National. Super Bowl LX in February 2026 pushed similar numbers across the US operators, with peak handle concentrated in the 90 minutes before kickoff and the first two quarters.

The 2026 standard is a microservices architecture hosted on AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure. That means different functions — the bet slip engine, user wallets, live odds feeds, KYC verification, payment processing — run as independent services that can scale independently. When the Super Bowl crunch hits, the platform spins up thousands of extra “wallet” or “odds feed” containers within seconds, handles the load, and scales back down once traffic normalizes.

Load testing for a major event starts 60-90 days out. Teams simulate peak traffic using tools that replay historical betting patterns at 2-3x scale, watching for database bottlenecks, API response time degradation, and memory leaks that only surface under sustained load. Anything that breaks in load testing gets fixed and retested. The stress testing is intense enough that some operators run full staging environments that mirror production during the final week.

The consequences of getting this wrong are brutal. A January 2025 Bet365 cash-out outage during a packed European match night — just a few hours of downtime — undermined years of brand investment and generated a week of negative coverage. For a US operator on Super Bowl Sunday, a similar outage would cost tens of millions in lost handle and probably trigger state regulator attention.

Promotions, Acquisition, and the Real Super Bowl Strategy

The biggest misconception about sportsbook preparation is that it’s all about the game outcome. In reality, the Super Bowl matters more as a customer acquisition window than as a single-day revenue event — and that changes how operators plan everything from bonus spend to trading desk positioning.

The numbers tell the story. A typical US operator will spend 25-40% of its annual marketing budget in the 30 days around the Super Bowl and March Madness combined, and the lifetime value of a customer acquired during these windows is measurably higher than one acquired in August. Which is why you see the “Bet $5, Get $200” new-user offers rolled out in the first week of February, and why risk-free bet promotions cluster around kickoff. The acquisition economics make the math work even if individual promos look absurd on paper.

Cross-sell is the other half of the equation. Books that offer multiple products — sports, casino, DFS — use big events to funnel new sports bettors into higher-margin casino games over the following weeks. That’s a major reason operators with casino licenses (DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM) can justify more aggressive sports betting promotions than operators who only offer sportsbooks.

• Week before event: New-user offers hit maximum value, retargeting ads flood social media, email sequences fire for lapsed bettors.
• 24 hours before kickoff: Boosted odds on “lean plays” the book wants action on, odds boosts targeting specific markets with exposure imbalance.
• Live / in-game: Live-betting promotions, parlay insurance, “second chance” offers to keep customers engaged through blowouts.
• Day after: Cross-sell into casino, retention offers for new users, funnel nurture sequences.

Competition From Prediction Markets Changes the Playbook

The newest wrinkle in sportsbook prep is the rise of federally-regulated prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, which now capture an estimated 5% of legal US sports betting handle — a number that barely existed two years ago. For Super Bowl LX, prediction market handle was high enough to materially reduce what Nevada’s sportsbooks took, and the operators are noticing.

The practical response from the traditional books has been to launch their own trading platforms. DraftKings, FanDuel, and Fanatics all rolled out prediction market products in late 2025, positioning them as complements to sportsbook accounts rather than replacements. The trading desks behind these products operate under different rules — CFTC commodity regulations rather than state gaming commissions — which means different pricing models and different risk exposure.

For bettors, the short version is: if you only ever use the sportsbook app, you’re seeing about 70% of the available markets for a major event. The rest lives on prediction markets, exchange products, and sometimes international books with US-facing affiliates. If you want a sense of which traditional books are best positioned for the 2026 event calendar, our sports betting guide breaks down the differences between operators by product depth, promo strategy, and platform reliability.

What This Means for Bettors

Understanding how sportsbooks prepare is useful because it tells you where the edges and traps are hiding on event days. The public-facing narrative is “it’s the biggest day of the year for the book.” The actual playbook is much more nuanced — and a little bit of knowledge about how the machine works goes a long way toward making better bets.

A few specific takeaways from how the books actually operate:

• Shop opening lines aggressively. The gap between opening and closing lines on major events is often 1-2 points on spreads and 20-40 basis points on moneylines. If you have a view, bet it early — the closing line almost never moves in your favor.
• Fade heavy public markets. If you see an 80-20 split on bet percentage but the line isn’t moving, sharp money is on the other side. The books have already adjusted their exposure internally.
• Use multiple books during promo windows. Operators compete hardest on acquisition in the week before a major event. If you have accounts at three books, the combined value of their new-user offers is usually 3-5x what any single book will give you.
• Expect friction at peak. Login delays, slow bet acceptance, and temporary market freezes are normal on Super Bowl Sunday. Build in a buffer and never try to place a bet in the final 60 seconds before kickoff.
• Watch the same-game parlay trap. The books are actively leaning into these because the margins are huge. A $20 SGP is way worse expected value than two $10 straight bets, even if the advertised payout looks better.

The takeaway: the biggest sportsbooks in the US are running sophisticated trading operations with real risk management, real technology stress-testing, and real competitive pressure from prediction markets. They’re not just hanging a line and hoping the public hammers the wrong side. For a broader look at the current state of the US sports betting industry, the American Gaming Association’s State of the States report publishes the most reliable operator-level data on handle, hold, and market share.

Frequently Asked Questions

World Cup 2026 Betting Trends to Watch

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is the first global soccer tournament held across a US market with legal sports betting nationwide — and the handle projections are staggering. Industry analysts estimate US bettors will wager between $2.5 billion and $3.1 billion on the tournament, more than double the 2022 World Cup handle, with roughly 40% of that money going through mobile sportsbooks in states that weren’t even live in Qatar. The betting markets are deeper, the prop menus are wilder, and the sharp money is moving in patterns we haven’t seen before.

Here are the trends we’re tracking as the June 11 opener approaches — what the sharp money is doing, where the public is piling in, and which markets are offering the best value before the group stage even kicks off.

The US Legal Landscape — First Home-Hosted World Cup With Real Sportsbooks

For the first time ever, a World Cup on US soil will run alongside legal, regulated sports betting in 38 states plus Washington, D.C. That means an estimated 220 million American adults will have access to a licensed mobile sportsbook during the tournament — a number that didn’t exist during the 2018 or 2022 cycles, and one that’s going to reshape how books hedge, how lines move, and where the sharp edges live.

The host country boost matters here. US-hosted matches are concentrated in 11 American cities (the other five venues are in Canada and Mexico), and the books already expect heavy USA bias in every market the Americans touch. Public money on Team USA futures started heating up in January — the books opened the US at around +8000 to win the tournament and have since shortened them to +4500 despite no on-field change. That’s public money, not sharp money, but it tells you where the handle is going.

If you’re new to betting soccer in general, our sports betting guide covers the basics of moneylines, draws, and goal totals. Soccer betting has its quirks — the three-way moneyline is the biggest one — but once you understand the structure, World Cup markets are some of the most interesting plays in the sports calendar.

The Most Popular 2026 World Cup Betting Markets

Futures and outright winner markets dominate the pre-tournament handle, but the real action moves to match-specific props, live betting, and Golden Boot futures once the group stage kicks off. Books are expecting roughly 55% of total handle to come from in-play wagers this cycle — a huge jump from the roughly 35% in-play share at Qatar 2022.

Here’s the breakdown of where the money is landing in the pre-tournament window, based on operator reporting from early April:

Player props are where the sharps are living. The expanded format means 48 teams and a much wider player pool, and the books simply haven’t had time to sharpen every goal scorer, shots-on-target, and assist line for every squad. Look at the smaller nations — books are softer on Canada, Morocco, Japan, and the African qualifiers — and expect opening lines to move fast once the sharp syndicates get involved.

Trends From Recent Tournaments That Still Matter

Three patterns from the last four major tournaments (World Cup 2018, Euro 2020, World Cup 2022, Euro 2024) are holding up well enough to inform 2026 strategy. Understanding them is the difference between betting blind and betting with an edge.

1. Unders print in the knockout rounds

Knockout soccer is different from group stage soccer. Teams tighten up, managers coach not to lose, and the average goals per match in World Cup knockout rounds since 2010 is 2.31 — compared to 2.69 in the group stage. The unders have hit at roughly 58% in knockout matches over the last three World Cups. Books know this and shade the totals, but the value is still there in tight draws that go to extra time and penalties (where the 90-minute total locks).

2. First-half unders crush the opening week

Opening matches of group stages are famously cautious. Qatar 2022’s first round of group play saw an average of 1.1 first-half goals per match. The first-half under 0.5 or under 1.0 is one of the most consistent plays in tournament betting — and oddsmakers almost always hang these lines assuming a more open game than actually develops.

3. Draw No Bet has quietly become the sharp play

In tournaments with draw rates around 25-30% (which every recent World Cup has been), the Draw No Bet market offers real value on favorites over weaker opposition. You give up a bit of price for the insurance against a 0-0 or 1-1 stalemate, and across 104 matches that insurance pays for itself if you’re picking matchups carefully.

The Host Nation Advantage — Does USA 2026 Get a Boost?

Host nations historically overperform their pre-tournament odds by a meaningful margin, and the US squad is no exception. The USMNT is getting every possible advantage — 11 of the 16 venues are on home soil, travel is minimal, altitude acclimation is a non-factor, and the crowds will be overwhelmingly pro-US in every stadium except their own rivalry matchups. That’s a real edge, and the books are pricing it in.

The historical data is actually encouraging. Since 1998, host nations have reached at least the quarterfinals in five of seven tournaments: France ’98 (won), Korea/Japan ’02 (Korea reached semis), Germany ’06 (third place), South Africa ’10 (group stage — the exception), Brazil ’14 (fourth place), Russia ’18 (quarters), Qatar ’22 (group stage — the second exception). Qatar and South Africa are outliers because they were automatic-qualifier hosts with limited international experience. The US doesn’t have that problem.

Mexico and Canada are the other co-hosts and deserve a second look too. Mexico has home-field advantage for its group stage matches at Azteca, and the squad has quietly put together its best qualifying cycle in years. Canada is a longer shot, but at +15000 to win the tournament and around +500 to reach the knockout rounds, there’s a lottery ticket worth considering.

Sharp Betting Strategies for the Group Stage and Beyond

The sharp money in World Cup tournaments follows a predictable pattern: find group-stage value early, fade the public on the obvious futures, and live-bet the knockout rounds where sportsbook models break down in extra time. Here’s how to execute each one without needing a PhD in expected goals.

• Shop openers aggressively. Futures lines move 10-15% between open and tournament start. Lock in group winners and advancement markets early — before public money drags the favorites shorter.
• Target “second favorite” advancement bets. In 12 groups, the public hammers the favorite to win the group. The second-place team to advance (which is the other bet in a four-team group) often sits at plus money with better implied probability.
• Fade the biggest public futures. Brazil, France, and Argentina will have the shortest odds and the heaviest public action. If you like any of them, wait for live betting — you’ll get better prices after their first group match.
• Live-bet the 70th minute. Tied knockout matches get cagey in the final 20 minutes. Totals drop, and the value on “no goal in the next 10 minutes” or “match to go to extra time” opens up as models overcorrect for desperation attacking.

Expected goals (xG) data is more widely available now than it was in 2022, and if you’re serious about finding edges in soccer props, tracking team-level xG from domestic leagues is the single most useful input. Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, and Serie A all publish xG data, and the best sportsbook tools now pull it directly into their prop menus. FIFA’s official tournament page has schedule and venue details, but for tactical breakdowns, the club-season xG data is where the sharpest information lives.

When you’re ready to place bets, choose a sportsbook with deep soccer markets. The books we cover in our best sports betting sites roundup all offer 2026 World Cup futures, live betting, and prop menus, but the depth varies significantly — DraftKings and FanDuel have the widest prop menus, while Caesars and BetMGM offer better boost promotions for parlays.

What to Watch Through the Tournament

The smart approach to a six-week tournament isn’t to bet everything — it’s to pick your spots and stay disciplined when public money is distorting lines. Here are the five specific things we’ll be tracking through the group stage and into the knockout rounds:

• Group E and Group H value: The two “group of death” candidates this cycle are where the sharp money is looking for advancement and top-scorer value.
• First-match fatigue: Teams with deep Champions League runs typically start slow. Watch Real Madrid and Manchester City players in their opening matches.
• USMNT knockout round pricing: If the US makes it out of the group stage, the pricing on their first knockout match will be the biggest public-vs-sharp divergence of the tournament.
• Heat factor: US summer matches in Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, and Miami will be played in extreme heat. Expect unders to hit at a higher rate in afternoon kickoffs.
• Golden Boot late value: After the group stage, the Golden Boot market gets sharper but often overrates the leading scorer. Look for players who got one fewer goal but have easier knockout brackets.

This tournament is going to be the biggest US betting event in history, and the combination of home-field atmosphere, expanded format, and nationwide legal sportsbooks will create more opportunity — and more public-money traps — than any World Cup before it. Stay patient, shop lines across multiple books, and remember that the best bets of the tournament are usually the ones nobody else is talking about.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will 2026 Be the Biggest Year Yet for Gambling Regulation?

2026 is shaping up as the most consequential year for US gambling regulation since the Supreme Court killed PASPA in 2018. Twenty-seven states have active gambling bills on the table, Maine just became the eighth online-casino state, and regulators in four states are forcing sportsbooks to deploy AI-driven monitoring that flags problem gambling in real time. What happens — and what doesn’t — over the next nine months will shape the US betting landscape for the rest of the decade.

The headline story isn’t a single bill or a single state. It’s that the post-PASPA gold rush is over, and regulators are finally catching up to an industry that grew faster than anyone planned for. Here’s what we’re watching, why it matters, and where we think the dust will settle by December.

The State-Level Legalization Wave Meets the Same Old Holdouts

Twenty-seven states have introduced gambling-related legislation in 2026, but the two biggest prizes — Texas and California — remain locked in political standoffs that tax revenue alone can’t break. And in both states, the ghost of 2022 still haunts every new bill.

Start with Texas. Senator Carol Alvarado filed Senate Joint Resolution 16, which would put sports betting on the ballot as a constitutional amendment. On paper, the bill has a path. In practice, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — who controls the Senate calendar — has made it clear that sports betting isn’t coming up for a vote on his watch. Until that changes, industry analysts don’t expect meaningful movement before 2027.

California is a different kind of stuck. The 2022 ballot measures — one backed by tribes, one by commercial operators — both collapsed after the two sides spent a combined $450 million attacking each other instead of the opposition. Three years later, the tribes and the sportsbooks still haven’t agreed on a framework, and any legalization effort needs voter approval. The earliest realistic window is the November 2026 general election, and nobody in Sacramento is holding their breath.

The better news for the industry is that the bench of active bills is deep. Missouri crossed the line in late 2025, Georgia has a constitutional amendment moving through committee, and Minnesota’s sports betting proposal — which died twice in the past four years — finally has bipartisan backing thanks to renewed tribal-commercial talks. None are guaranteed. But the momentum is real, and every one of them is watching the others.

Federal Oversight — Is Washington Finally Paying Attention?

Federal gambling regulation is still a patchwork, but 2026 could mark the first serious federal intervention since the 2018 PASPA repeal. Three pressure points are converging at once: the jurisdictional chaos around prediction markets, the DOJ’s shifting posture on the Wire Act, and renewed debate over tribal gaming compacts in states where commercial operators are eating tribal revenue.

The prediction market fight is the loudest. Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket now offer sports-related event contracts that look a lot like parlay bets — except they’re regulated by the CFTC as commodities, not by state gaming commissions as wagering. State regulators hate this. The operators love it. And neither Congress nor the DOJ has been willing to draw a hard line. Our deep dive on why prediction markets scare regulators breaks down the legal mess in more detail, but the short version: if Washington doesn’t step in soon, the states will force the issue.

Then there’s the Wire Act. The DOJ’s 2018 reinterpretation — the one that briefly threatened interstate online poker — has been in legal limbo for years. A clean 2026 clarification from the Attorney General’s office would either unlock shared online poker liquidity across state lines or pull the plug on it entirely. Operators have been planning for both outcomes since 2023. For a broader look at the federal and state framework, see our US gambling laws overview.

Tribal gaming compacts round out the list. Several states — Florida, California, Oklahoma, Minnesota — are renegotiating exclusivity deals that are decades old and were written before mobile sports betting existed. Whatever gets signed in 2026 will set the template for how commercial and tribal operators share markets for the next twenty years.

iGaming Expansion — The Eighth State Finally Arrives

Maine became the eighth state to legalize real-money online casino gambling in early 2026, joining New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island. It’s the first new iGaming state since Rhode Island went live in 2024, and industry analysts don’t expect any more to follow this year. Which, given the revenue gap, should be embarrassing.

Here’s the math nobody in Columbus, Albany, or Springfield wants to admit: New Jersey generated roughly $2.4 billion in online casino gross gaming revenue in 2025, compared to about $1.2 billion in online sports betting. iGaming is a bigger tax base than sports betting in every state where both are legal — by a factor of two to one. Operators like DraftKings have been openly telling analysts that iGaming is where the margins live.

• Legal iGaming states (2026): New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, West Virginia, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, Maine
• States with active iGaming bills: New York, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Virginia
• Outlook: Industry analysts expect zero of the above to pass in 2026, with most realistic momentum in New York and Illinois for 2027

So why the stall? Two reasons. First, tribal gaming interests in several states view iGaming as direct cannibalization of their physical casinos — unlike sports betting, which tribes often run themselves, online casino play competes with the slot floor. Second, anti-gambling groups have gotten much better at messaging around addiction, and iGaming is an easier target than sportsbooks because the play cycle is faster and the dopamine hits are more frequent. Both concerns are legitimate. Both are also fixable. Neither is going away.

Responsible Gambling Enters the AI Era

Four states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and North Carolina — now require sportsbook operators to use algorithmic monitoring to flag problem gambling behavior, and New York is proposing a national self-exclusion database alongside a ban on AI-powered predatory marketing. This is the regulation conversation nobody was having two years ago, and it’s going to define the second half of the decade.

The rules vary state to state, but the pattern is consistent: operators have to watch for specific behavioral triggers (rapid deposit increases, late-night play spikes, chasing losses), and when those triggers fire, the platform has to intervene — a cool-off prompt, a required deposit limit check-in, or in some cases a temporary account freeze. Sportsbooks already had this data. Now they have to act on it.

On the advertising side, five states — Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and North Carolina — have already restricted gambling ads in media channels with significant underage audiences. Expect more states to follow, and expect at least one high-profile federal proposal targeting broadcast sports betting ads before the end of 2026. The SAFE Bet Act, which proposed federal ad restrictions in 2024, is being quietly rewritten with bipartisan input. It might actually go somewhere this time.

For bettors, the practical impact is simple: expect more prompts, more check-ins, and more friction if you’re playing aggressively. Most of it will be annoying. Some of it will catch a problem before it becomes one. For more on how to use these tools proactively, see our responsible gambling resources.

What This Means for Bettors

If you already live in a state with legal sports betting, 2026 means better consumer protections, more aggressive responsible gambling prompts, and — most likely — the same apps you’re using now. If you live in Texas, California, or Georgia, it probably means another year of offshore workarounds or sweepstakes casinos. And if you live in Maine, your legal iGaming experience is coming within the next few months.

A few specific things to watch through the rest of the year:

• Prediction market rulings: Any federal court decision on Kalshi’s sports event contracts could reshape the entire landscape — in either direction.
• Georgia and Minnesota: The two most likely new sports betting states in 2026. Watch for session-end votes in March and April.
• New York iGaming: A 2026 bill probably won’t pass, but the committee hearings will set the tone for 2027.
• SAFE Bet Act 2.0: Federal advertising restrictions are the sleeper story. If this moves, it moves fast.
• Tax thresholds: The federal W-2G reporting threshold for gambling wins ($600) hasn’t moved since 1977. A long-delayed increase is in the House Ways and Means queue.

2026 isn’t the year gambling regulation gets finished. It’s the year it gets serious. The cowboy phase is over, and the adult-in-the-room phase is starting. If you’re a bettor, that’s mostly good news — the industry was going to hit this wall eventually, and the sooner it gets there, the more stable the market becomes for everyone who uses it. For ongoing coverage of state-level developments, the American Gaming Association’s state of play map is the best single source we’ve found.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to Bet on 2026 NBA Awards (MVP, DPOY, ROY & Sixth Man)

The NBA season is winding down, which means award season is upon us. Before long, the NBA MVP and other awards will be announced, and you’ll have missed your chance to make some money.

Betting on 2026 NBA awards doesn’t have to be difficult. The pricing can spike in a hurry, and not every award is worth betting on, but there are clear angles and strategies for each trophy.

This 2026 NBA awards betting guide is focused on pointing you in the right direction, whether it be preparing you to bet on individual awards or nudging you toward the best sportsbook.

Let’s dive into these fun NBA betting markets and gauge what the best approach is for this year.

What is NBA Awards Betting?

NBA awards betting is a form of futures betting where you try to correctly predict (and bet on) which players will win specific awards. You wager on the outcome of the award race, and at the end of the season, you win money if you predict the winner correctly.

Here’s a snapshot of the most popular NBA award markets you can typically bet on:

• Most Valuable Player (MVP)
• Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY)
• Rookie of the Year (ROY)
• Sixth Man of the Year
• Coach of the Year

Unlike individual game betting, these markets cover the course of the entire NBA season, and you bet on which player will be voted as the award winner.

How NBA Awards Are Decided

NBA awards are voted on by a panel of media members, not regular analysts or even oddsmakers. This can incorporate human bias and opinion into the pricing, but it can also leave the door open for a key edge for bettors.

Here’s the main criteria these voters are factoring when they make their pick at the end of the year:

• Team success
• Individual production
• Narrative
• Games played
• 2-way impact

The team’s success criteria apply the most to the league MVP and Coach of the Year, but they can be viewed on different spectrums. For instance, a league MVP almost always comes from a top-2 seed, but a COY winner may not necessarily follow suit.

For all NBA awards, you need to pass the eye test in terms of raw stats and overall production. Panels typically are not going to dig into advanced stats. A small number of voters might do that, but if your surface-level stats aren’t impressive, you’re unlikely to win.

Narratives can be key, but aren’t the biggest driving factor. That said, if a player has never won an award and he’s in contention, it’s something bettors need to consider.

The NBA has a current rule regarding the number of games players need to suit up for in order to qualify to win an award. That number is set at 65, but the league is said to be exploring changing it due to some deserving players being omitted from awards races due to injury or unforeseen circumstances.

For the MVP in particular, a player’s two-way viability is usually considered. This means that a player can’t just excel on the offensive end of the floor. If their defense is bad or a hindrance to their team, it can impact their odds of winning the NBA MVP award.

Where to Bet on NBA Awards

Before we dive too deep into how you should bet on 2026 NBA awards this year, let’s take a pitstop at the best sites for betting on NBA awards.

This list is equal parts factual and subjective, and not really ranked in specific order. But there’s no denying that the following basketball betting apps are among the top options online.

All of these sites are great for betting on the NBA, but it’s arguable that DraftKings takes the cake if you want as many boxes checked as possible for NBA awards betting.

Of course, that all depends on what matters most to you.

This plays into line shopping, as well as bonuses and promotions. Finding the site that suits you best is something only you can decide. But if you need a site for NBA awards betting, picking one of the three above is a good place to start.

How to Bet on the NBA MVP Award

The NBA MVP award is usually the most obvious race when you get down to the end of the season and that’s not different this year.

To gauge what to do with this market, let’s inspect the latest odds, what goes into successfully betting on this award, and who we like to win it this year.

Latest NBA MVP Odds

The race is probably spelled out for us, as Oklahoma City Thunder star point guard SGA is a very strong favorite to repeat as league MVP. He won the hardware last year, and he’s done little to suggest he won’t win again this year.

OKC is again the best team in the NBA, and SGA has posted MVP-worthy stats, so the only issue is a lack of value for bettors.

Luka Doncic and Cade Cunningham are two seemingly viable contenders that are technically eliminated due to the NBA’s clunky “65-game rule”, and they’re both currently sidelined.

Wemby is the top contender and is viewed as the only real threat to SGA’s MVP throne. He even went out of his way to plead his case.

Some people like Wemby’s public cry to be considered for league MVP, and others thought it was tacky. Regardless, his team isn’t ahead of SGA’s, and Wemby’s individual stats aren’t clearly better than the betting favorite’s.

Jokic and Brown have mild cases and offer solid value in theory, but are pretty poor bets.

NBA MVP Betting Strategy

This race seems to be wrapped up, but general NBA MVP betting strategy includes elite individual production, high-level team success, and strong narrative alignment.

It’s also best to bet on who will win the NBA MVP award before the season even starts. SGA is now listed at an absurd -4000, but preseason NBA MVP favorites tend to be priced around -200 to +200, depending on the player and season.

At this point, this betting market is best left avoided, or you should take a swing at someone other than SGA and hope for the narrative to pay off.

• Pick: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (-4000)

It sure looks like SGA is going to win this thing for the second year in a row. My advice is to simply ignore this betting market and try targeting it earlier in the year when next season rolls around.

If you want to place a bet, however, Wemby is the clear pivot. He still offers pretty alluring +1800 odds, and he personally broke down his stronger-than-expected case to win it this year.

How to Bet on NBA Defensive Player of the Year

There are no current odds for this award at DraftKings, but that’s probably because the pricing for this award is even worse than it is for the NBA MVP.

Wemby pulled in with astronomical -10000 odds to win the award the last time pricing was available, and he checks every logical box for this market.

Defensive Player of the Year Odds

These were the most recent odds to win the NBA Defensive Player of the Year award, but it’s currently not an open betting market. Wemby is the runaway favorite, so this is one we can cross off our list.

That said, if you want to prepare for next year, be sure to read up on our strategy tips.

DPOY Betting Strategy

The path to the NBA Defensive Player of the Year award is usually pretty straightforward. This is a big man’s award, and you better have a clear impact on the glass and around the rim.

Look for the following when sizing up the DPOY candidates:

• Rebounding
• Shot-blocking
• Team defense
• Team success

A DPOY winner can hail from a less-than-elite team, but usually, they at least need to be somewhat successful. IE, their impact on defense can’t go in vain.

In addition, the Defensive Player of the Year needs to dominate in at least one of two categories: rebounding and blocking shots (and ideally it’s both).

It remains to be seen how deep panels go or will go in the future when measuring DPOY impact, but so far, it seems this is their main criterion when casting their vote.

Defensive Player of the Year Prediction

• Pick: Wemby (-10000)

You literally can’t even place this bet right now, and it’s not a price I would suggest going after even if you could. Wemby is the slam dunk winner, though, as he’s the anchor to an elite San Antonio Spurs defense, and he averaged 11.5 rebounds and a staggering 3.1 blocks per game.

Wemby is a total eraser inside the paint, and his defensive prowess is made all the more impressive when you realize 1. His impact has further reach than his raw stats and 2. He’s just as good on the offensive side of the floor.

How to Bet on NBA Rookie of the Year

The NBA Rookie of the Year award is often very obvious, as the #1 pick in the NBA Draft tends to have the leg up. Not only are they the rookie stars getting the most attention from the jump, but they also tend to be the most talented players in their class.

That said, all draft classes are not equal, so the separation between the top pick and other players – not to mention role, overall production, and team success – can make betting on the Rookie of the Year difficult at times.

NBA Rookie of the Year Odds

The latest NBA Rookie of the Year betting odds favor Dallas Mavericks star Cooper Flagg. He’s had an amazing year despite some injuries and his team being terrible, but he’s been the bright spot along the way.

Flagg wasn’t expected to be this dominant offensively, either. Needless to say, his 21.2 points per game put him front and center in this Rookie of the Year race. The fact that he also rebounds well (6.6 rpg) and can create for others (4.6 apg) while defending at a high level (1.2 steals per game) cements his case.

Oh, and he became the youngest player ever to score 50 points in a game.

Flagg looks like a borderline lock to win Rookie of the Year at this point, which makes his -200 price tag a flat out steal.

The only other contender is Charlotte Hornets sharpshooter Kon Knueppel, who at least does have a solid case as a pivot bet.

Knueppel has been lights out from long range (43%) and has put up 18.7 points per game despite simply being one piece to the puzzle in Charlotte. The two key edges he has over Flagg? His team has had way more success, and he’s also been the more efficient player in general.

NBA Rookie of the Year Betting Strategy

There are several things that play into any prospective NBA Rookie of the Year betting strategy, but the reality is you’re simply betting on which NBA rookie will enjoy the best season.

The winner is usually pretty obvious, as most first-year players tend to struggle. A lot of their issues tend to deal with role and readiness for the highest level of basketball, and those factors should be part of your betting approach:

• Opportunity matters
• Consider versatility
• Prioritize players on bad teams
• Track rotations early
• Favor top draft picks
• Research talent and potential
• Bet early

Opportunity is the biggest factor for rookies. Does the guy you’re betting on have a clear path to starting or a locked-in role? Are they a versatile performer that can score in more than one way or rack up other stats if their shot isn’t falling?

In addition, you’ll want to prioritize the top portion of the first round with a focus on players with defined roles on bad teams. This allows them to play more, and it’s also easier to assess their overall impact, whether it be raw stats or how much they elevate their squad.

Overall, you’re trying to marry talent+opportunity and project which player will perform the best in year one.

The #1 pick is usually a good starting point, but they don’t win every season. The ROY has come from anywhere but the first overall pick in five of the last seven years, after all.

NBA Rookie of the Year Prediction

• Pick: Cooper Flagg (-200)

Kon Knueppel has a mild case to upset Flagg, but if we look at recent form and ceiling performances, this is clearly Flagg’s race to lose.

The other narratives adding to his case include the fact that he’s faced much more pressure as the top pick in the NBA Draft, as well as the reality that defenses key in on him every single game.

Flagg has taken on a bigger role and faced more pressure, yet he’s churned out better scoring and edges Knueppel out in rebounding, assists, and steals. I wouldn’t say there’s no chance Kon can win, but Flagg is the top value among all 2026 NBA awards bets right now.

How to Bet on 6th Man of the Year

Another key NBA award is the Sixth Man of the Year. This award goes to the best player who comes off the bench and makes an impact as the team’s top rotational piece.

The 6th Man of the Year tends to play 20-25 minutes and provide efficient scoring bursts to assist the starting five. The winner is typically somewhat obvious, but this is a race that can be subjective and go down to the wire.

Latest NBA 6th Man of the Year Odds

This is a betting market that is usually a little more undecided, even late in the year. That’s because even the best 6th Men are dealing with a somewhat limited role, and most of their production revolves around scoring.

Keldon Johnson is an interesting frontrunner, simply because a guy on his own team – Dylan Harper – might have just as strong of a case. If people want a strong 6th Man bet and are prioritizing team success, however, then Johnson does fit the bill.

Jaquez is definitely a worthy contender, though. His Miami Heat aren’t as good as the Spurs, but he puts up more points per game than Johnson and also happens to be the more versatile performer when you factor in his playmaking ability.

In fact, Jaquez doesn’t benefit as much as Johnson does in terms of open looks and team success, making his production arguably more impressive.

Late-season changes dull the shine of would-be viable contenders like Dosunmu and Sheppard, but they may have been very strong bets if their seasons ended a bit differently.

Sixth Man of the Year Betting Strategy

If you’re betting on who will win the NBA 6th Man of the Year award, you need to be willing to assume some risk. That’s if you’re placing bets before the season starts, of course.

This is the rare NBA betting market where waiting until later in the year is actually encouraged. Gone are the days of Jamal Crawford or Lou Williams being the obvious pick. Things are more spread out now, and player roles can change in the blink of an eye.

I’d bet later on this award, while also considering the following:

• Prioritize scoring
• Avoid players who could become starters
• Lean into role consistency
• Consider team success

You want explosive scorers who can be hyper-efficient in limited action off the bench. Who can score at a high level on a moment’s notice? That’s the first guy to be considered for this award.

Beyond that, make sure these guys don’t have clear paths to starting for their respective teams and make sure they can be reliable, consistent contributors to a winning squad.

NBA 6th Man of the Year Prediction

• Pick: Jaime Jaquez Jr. (+320)

Keldon Johnson is the runaway favorite at -350. All things considered, that’s a fair price and one we can still attack. I don’t think he’s as obvious of a pick, however, so I’d rather pivot to Jaquez.

Jaquez has been the more impressive scorer on the year, while he’s also been a very good playmaker. Johnson is the better perimeter shooter by the numbers, but San Antonio could get by without him. Not having Jazquez’s instant offense off the bench might actually hurt Miami.

How to Bet on NBA Coach of the Year

The other awards discussed here are all about the players. Welcome to perhaps the most subjective NBA award of them all, as it’s tough to gauge what matters more; the coach on the best team, or the coach that does the most with the least around him.

It’s arguable either way, while we’ve seen coaches win the hardware for different reasons. It ultimately can depend on the season and what transpires, but I’ll analyze the latest odds and go over some key strategy tips.

NBA Coach of the Year Odds

The race to win the NBA Coach of the Year award is an interesting one, but the biggest thing to consider is the distance between where a team was and where it is now.

Those meteoric rises – particularly when they result in a first-place finish – are what bettors need to pay the most mind to. If the coach did a lot with very little, they’re even more so a lock.

All of that applies to Bickerstaff, who is a -310 favorite after leading the Detroit Pistons to the top seed in the Eastern Conference. When looking at his resume and the fact that he’s kept things afloat down the stretch despite losing Cade Cunningham to a collapsed lung, he’s a home run pick.

Joe Mazzulla is in the mix, though. His Celtics didn’t miss a beat despite losing Jayson Tatum to a torn Achilles. Heck, Boston even re-did their team on the fly. When looking at how the Indiana Pacers crumbled without top player Tyrese Haliburton in a similar spot, Mazzulla’s effort is even more noteworthy.

Mitch Johnson may be the best value of them all, however. He took a Spurs team that wasn’t even in the NBA playoffs a year ago to the brink of the top seed in the Western Conference. While the Spurs ultimately didn’t dethrone OKC, they did beat them in their four-game series over the course of the regular season.

It wouldn’t be right to leave out Hornets coach Charles Lee, either. He’s pieced together a gritty team that is short on experience but can slay dragons with physical defense and elite perimeter shooting. Transforming a dumpster fire Charlotte team into one of the NBA’s scariest outs comes playoff time is quite the accomplishment.

NBA Coach of the Year Betting Strategy

Betting on the NBA Coach of the Year awards comes down to some key criteria, as well as a little luck. Looking back at past Coach of the Year winners, it’s not an exact science, but the top guys tend to have certain things in common.

Making a big leap from one year to the next is key, while high-level team success is a must. You have a very good shot at winning if your team has the best record in your conference, while a top-2 seed is typically a precursor to claiming the hardware.

NBA Coach of the Year Prediction

• Pick: JB Bickerstaff (-310)

This is one NBA betting market where you could pick a name out of a hat blindly, and I don’t know if anyone cares who the coach is. There are legitimately six candidates that have a strong case here; each case is simply very different.

That said, Bickerstaff has earned this award. Detroit went from just another playoff team to one of the best defenses in all of basketball. They’ve been dominant at home, they’ve stepped up against elite competition, and as I write this, they’re pushing for 60 wins and have locked up the top seed in the Eastern Conference.

The big jump and nailing the 1-seed are huge, but the crazy part is the Pistons have done it with top-shelf coaching and team defense. Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren are fine superstars to build around, but they aren’t Wemby or Jokic.

Bickerstaff has done the most with the least, all things considered, and is the easy pick for this award.

General NBA Award Betting Strategies

I’ve detailed some key strategies for each NBA award that you’ll want to deploy, but there are also general strategies that apply to all markets.

• Bet early – Take advantage of prices when they’re at their best and strike before narratives lock.
• Track narratives – Speaking of narratives, it’s important to keep tabs on media, news, and rumors to help gauge where odds could be moving.
• Monitor injuries – Until the 65-game rule is gone, it’s something to track. Even if it gets eradicated, players missing a ton of time will naturally be negatively impacted.
• Shop lines – Once everything is factored, you still need to shop for the best NBA awards odds that money can buy.
• Map role changes – Whether it’s the ROY or the next 6th Man worth betting on, map our prospective player roles and bet accordingly.

NBA Awards Odds Movement Explained

You know how to bet on the major NBA awards, and you have some useful tips and strategies to lean on. But why do the odds move, and why does it matter?

Here’s a quick breakdown of NBA awards odds movement and what to keep an eye out for:

Common NBA Awards Betting Mistakes to Avoid

You know what to do when betting on who will win NBA awards, but what about what not to do?

If you want to get ahead in these types of betting markets, here are the biggest mistakes to avoid:

• Betting too late into the market
• Ignoring team success
• Overvaluing stats without context
• Leaning into the wrong data
• Not accounting for eligibility
• Ignoring narratives
• Chasing hype after odds move

All of these mistakes are easy to make, but they’re also easy to avoid. Most of them go together pretty seamlessly, too, so if you start watching out for some, you’ll naturally avoid many of the others.

Usually pricing speaks for itself. If a player has insane odds to win an award, you’ve missed the best time to join the party. By then, you need to move onto another market, invest in someone else, or just wait to see if things change for the better.

Overall, most NBA awards betting mistakes stem from not keeping tabs on the NBA season and players. If you’re monitoring injuries, roles, production, and pricing, you’ll likely be doing enough to give yourself a solid chance at profiting.

How to Win Betting on 2026 NBA Awards

The easiest path to winning money by betting on 2026 NBA awards is preparation and timing. You need to do your research and know what you’re betting on, but you also want to place most of your bets early and ideally before the new season even starts.

While true, you also want to stay synced up with the NBA season, as injuries and teams performing above or below expectations can drastically impact pricing.

Narratives are also important, while you also want to make sure the player or coaches you back follow a similar criteria of past winners. There are always going to be outlier results, but more often than not the NBA awards winners will follow a similar path.

For this year, Cooper Flagg to win ROY is easily the best value left on the board. With the season winding down in a hurry, I’d jump all over that bet before attacking anything else.

Fury vs. Makhmudov Betting Guide: Odds, Props & Best Bets for Saturday’s Netflix Fight

Tyson Fury is a -600 favorite against Arslanbek Makhmudov for their heavyweight showdown at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday, April 11, streaming live on Netflix. Those odds imply an 85.7% win probability for the Gypsy King — a number that deserves serious scrutiny given Fury’s back-to-back losses to Oleksandr Usyk, a 15-month layoff, and the fact that he’s 37 years old coming out of his fifth retirement. Makhmudov (21-2, 19 KOs) sits at +400, and while the Russian-born knockout artist isn’t a household name, his 90.5% KO rate makes him the kind of opponent who only needs one clean shot to ruin a comeback story.

This isn’t just another fight card. It’s Tyson Fury attempting to rewrite a narrative that’s been trending in the wrong direction since Usyk outpointed him twice, all while 60,000 fans pack a London football stadium and Netflix beams it globally to every subscriber on the planet. The betting markets are loaded — moneyline, method of victory, round props, over/under totals — and we’re breaking down every angle worth your bankroll.

Fury vs. Makhmudov Odds: The Full Betting Board

The moneyline tells a straightforward story: oddsmakers think Fury wins this fight roughly six out of seven times. But the method of victory market is where things get interesting — and where the real value hides.

Here’s what jumps off the board: Fury by KO/TKO is the shortest-priced method at -200, meaning oddsmakers expect the stoppage more than a points win. That’s unusual for a fighter whose last two bouts went the full 12 rounds. But it makes sense when you look at Makhmudov’s chin — he’s been stopped twice in his last three losses, and his walk-forward style practically invites counters from a fighter with Fury’s reach advantage.

The +350 on a Fury decision is worth flagging. Both Usyk fights went to the cards. Fury’s last stoppage win was Deontay Wilder in October 2021 — over four years ago. If you think ring rust slows Fury’s output enough that Makhmudov survives into the championship rounds, that’s a live number.

The implied probabilities tell a story worth questioning. Fury at -600 translates to roughly 85.7% in implied probability terms (before vig). Makhmudov’s +400 implies about 20%. For context, Buster Douglas was a 42-to-1 underdog against Mike Tyson. Nobody’s calling this fight that lopsided — but is there really only a 1-in-5 chance that a 37-year-old coming off two losses and a 15-month layoff gets caught by a guy who knocks out 90% of his opponents? That’s the question sharp bettors are asking. You can run these numbers yourself with our odds calculator to see exactly what your potential payouts look like.

Tyson Fury: The Gypsy King’s Fifth Comeback

At this point, Tyson Fury has retired more times than most heavyweight champions have defended a title. This is officially comeback number five — and unlike the previous returns, this one arrives under a cloud that has nothing to do with boxing politics or promotional disputes.

Fury’s record reads 34-2-1, but those two losses loom large. Both came against Oleksandr Usyk in 2026-caliber fights — the first a split decision in May 2024 that Fury arguably could have won, the second a more decisive unanimous decision in December 2024 that left little room for debate. The Fury who showed up for that rematch looked slower, less creative, and more hittable than the version who dismantled Deontay Wilder three times and pulled off the upset of the decade against Wladimir Klitschko in 2015.

The physical profile still demands respect. At 6’9″ with an 85-inch reach, Fury has a three-inch height advantage and five inches of reach on Makhmudov (6’6″, 80″ reach). That’s a canyon at heavyweight. When Fury uses his jab and moves laterally — the version of himself that beat Klitschko and outboxed Wilder in their trilogy — he’s nearly impossible to deal with for a shorter, pressure-first fighter.

The motivation narrative adds another layer. Fury’s return was reportedly sparked by the tragic car crash involving Anthony Joshua in Nigeria, which killed two of AJ’s close friends and team members and left Joshua himself injured. Plans had been building for a Fury-Joshua superfight later in 2026, but that timeline is now uncertain. Whether Fury’s emotional state translates to a focused, driven performance or a distracted one is genuinely unknowable — and it’s the kind of variable that oddsmakers can’t price.

One more thing working in Fury’s favor: he’s fighting at home. This is his first London fight since the Dereck Chisora stoppage in December 2022 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium — the same venue. A sold-out crowd of 60,000 screaming for the Gypsy King shouldn’t be underestimated as a factor, especially in a fight where Fury’s mental engagement matters as much as his physical condition.

Arslanbek Makhmudov: The Knockout Artist Nobody’s Talking About

If you only read the headline — “Tyson Fury fights Russian knockout artist” — you’d assume this is a hand-picked opponent designed to look scary on paper but fold on fight night. And honestly? You might be right. But Makhmudov’s resume deserves more than a dismissive glance.

The numbers are absurd: 21-2 with 19 KOs, a 90.5% knockout rate that includes 13 first-round finishes. Let that sink in — more than half of Makhmudov’s professional wins ended before the second round bell. He fights out of Montreal’s GYM (Groupe Yvon Michel) camp, stands 6’6″, and at 36, he’s only a year younger than Fury. This isn’t a young prospect being thrown in as a tune-up; it’s a seasoned (if limited) heavyweight who punches like he’s trying to settle a personal grudge.

The losses tell you everything about Makhmudov’s ceiling. Agit Kabayel stopped him in four rounds in December 2023 — a fight where Makhmudov walked forward into clean shots until the referee had seen enough. Guido Vianello stopped him in eight rounds in August 2024 via doctor’s stoppage after severe swelling shut his left eye. Neither Kabayel nor Vianello is an elite heavyweight. Both simply had the discipline to stay composed against Makhmudov’s pressure and make him pay for his lack of defensive variety.

But here’s the flip side: Makhmudov bounced back with a first-round KO of Ricardo Brown in June 2025 and then went 12 hard rounds with Dave Allen in October 2025, winning a clear unanimous decision (117-109, 116-110, 115-111) to claim the WBA Inter-Continental heavyweight title. That Allen fight was significant — it proved Makhmudov can pace himself over a full fight when needed, even if his default setting is “walk forward and throw bombs.”

Best Bets for Fury vs. Makhmudov

Forget the moneyline — laying -600 on a 37-year-old coming off two losses is the betting equivalent of picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. The value in this fight lives in the props. Here are four angles worth considering.

Pick 1: Fury by KO/TKO (-200) — The Favorite Play

The case: Makhmudov has been stopped twice in his last four fights. His fighting style — walking forward behind a high guard, loading up on power shots — is tailor-made for a counter-puncher with Fury’s reach advantage. Even a ring-rusty Fury should be able to time Makhmudov’s entries and punish him with straight rights and uppercuts on the inside. Fury’s last stoppage win (Wilder III, October 2021) showed he still carries genuine heavyweight power when he sits down on his shots.

The concern: Fury went the distance in seven of his last 13 fights, including both Usyk bouts. His output has trended downward in recent years, and a 15-month layoff rarely improves a fighter’s punch volume. If Fury comes out tentative and fights in spurts, Makhmudov is durable enough to survive into the later rounds.

The verdict: This is the chalk play, and -200 is a reasonable price for the most likely outcome. If you’re betting Fury, this is probably the way to do it rather than eating -600 on the moneyline.

Pick 2: Fight Does Not Go the Distance (-200 to -220)

The case: Between these two fighters, somebody is getting stopped. Fury has 24 career KOs. Makhmudov has 19 KOs and two stoppage losses. Makhmudov’s style forces exchanges — he doesn’t have the footwork to avoid danger for 36 minutes. And if Fury’s chin really has deteriorated (he’s been dropped in four different fights across his career), Makhmudov’s power could catch him in a firefight.

The concern: The Allen fight showed Makhmudov can survive 12 rounds, and Fury’s recent tendency to cruise through middle rounds means there’s a path to the scorecards.

The verdict: This is our top play. The stylistic matchup screams stoppage from either direction, and a -200 to -220 range is fair value given both fighters’ profiles.

Pick 3: Makhmudov by KO/TKO (+550) — The Upset Flier

The case: This is a small-unit value play, not a prediction. At +550, Makhmudov by stoppage implies roughly a 15% probability. Here’s why it might be underpriced: Fury has been dropped in multiple fights against opponents with less raw power than Makhmudov. The 15-month layoff will dull Fury’s reflexes — timing is the first thing to go in boxing, and timing is everything against a pressure fighter. Makhmudov’s constant forward movement and willingness to trade means he’ll always be in punching range, and he only needs to land one bomb on a 37-year-old chin.

The concern: Makhmudov has never fought anyone close to Fury’s caliber. His losses to Kabayel and Vianello — good fighters but not elite — suggest he might crumble against true top-level opposition. Fury’s jab and movement could neutralize Makhmudov’s pressure before it ever becomes dangerous.

The verdict: Worth a half-unit or quarter-unit sprinkle. You’re not betting that Makhmudov is the better fighter — you’re betting that a 90.5% KO rate against a rusty, aging opponent is worth more than 15% implied probability. The risk-reward is there.

Pick 4: Fury by Decision (+350) — The Contrarian Angle

The case: Everyone expects a stoppage — which is exactly why the decision price has drifted out. Fury’s last two fights went the full 12 rounds. Makhmudov just proved he can go 12 against Dave Allen. If Fury comes out cautious (a reasonable assumption after 15 months off), jabs from range, and uses his footwork to keep Makhmudov at distance, we could easily see a points win. Fury’s natural boxing ability, even diminished, is levels above what Makhmudov has faced.

The concern: Fury would need to actively avoid engaging for 12 rounds against a guy who walks forward non-stop. That requires sustained discipline and cardio — two things ring rust undermines. And a cautious Fury might actually be more vulnerable to Makhmudov’s style than an aggressive one.

The verdict: A solid contrarian bet if you think the market is overweighting the stoppage narrative. At +350, you’re getting 3.5-to-1 on an outcome that’s probably closer to 20-25% likely based on recent form.

Undercard Bets: Benn vs. Prograis and More

The main event isn’t the only game in town. This undercard has some legitimate betting opportunities, headlined by a co-main event that’s almost as compelling as Fury-Makhmudov from a pure sports betting perspective.

Conor Benn (-1200) vs. Regis Prograis (+700) — 10 rounds, 150 lbs: Benn (24-1, 14 KOs) is making his Zuffa Boxing debut after leaving Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom, and he’s drawn a dangerous but fading Prograis (30-3, 24 KOs). The former two-time junior welterweight world champion is 35 and has dropped three of his last seven. Benn’s power at 150 pounds should be the difference, but at -1200, there’s zero value on the favorite. If you must bet this fight, look at method of victory props — Benn by stoppage in the middle rounds offers better return than the flat moneyline.

Richard Riakporhe (-250) vs. Jeamie TKV Tshikeva (+190) — 12 rounds, British heavyweight title: This is the undercard fight with the most betting value. Tshikeva holds the British heavyweight title and has been a pleasant surprise, but Riakporhe’s power at cruiserweight translated well when he moved up to heavyweight. At -250, Riakporhe is appropriately priced but not overpriced. A straight bet on Riakporhe or a method-of-victory play on Riakporhe by stoppage both look reasonable.

Justis Huni (-710) vs. Frazer Clarke (+400) — 10 rounds, heavyweight: Australian Olympic representative Huni is the clear class edge here, but Clarke (a 2020 Olympic bronze medalist for Team GB) will have the crowd. Huni should win comfortably, but -710 isn’t a price you can bet with any meaningful edge. Pass on this one unless the round props offer something worth chasing.

How to Watch Fury vs. Makhmudov

This one’s simple: if you have Netflix, you have the fight. The Fury-Makhmudov card streams live globally on Netflix at no additional cost beyond your existing subscription — no pay-per-view fee, no premium tier required. After the success of the Paul-Tyson event and the Canelo-Munguia card, Netflix has leaned fully into live boxing as a subscriber retention tool, and this is their biggest card yet.

• Prelims: 10:30 AM ET / 3:30 PM GMT on Tudum.com and The Ring Magazine social channels
• Main card: 12:00 PM ET / 5:00 PM GMT on Netflix
• Main event ring walks: Approximately 5:00 PM ET / 10:00 PM GMT

For betting, the major US sportsbooks — BetMGM, FanDuel, and DraftKings — all have full fight markets including moneyline, method of victory, round props, and over/under totals. Boxing odds tend to vary more between books than NFL or NBA lines, so line shopping matters here.

Frequently Asked Questions

MLB Home Runs Picks Today – Monday’s Best HR Props (4/6/2026)

It’s a day that ends in Y, so you better believe now is a good time to target some MLB home run picks. Every single MLB betting slate offers long ball potential, and it’s all about combining power hitters with park factors, weather, and the right matchup.

Wondering which MLB HR prop bets are worth your time? I’ve looked at all the MLB HR props live at DraftKings to single out a safe play, my favorite value, and the best longshot worth attacking.

My MLB home run predictions won’t always convert at a high rate, but these are going to be some of the best MLB HR bets you can possibly make. Let’s see what looks good for Monday’s slate.

Quick MLB HR Picks for Monday

Here’s a quick list of my three favorite MLB HR picks for Monday. The tiers can certainly be viewed as arbitrary when considering a high-variance sport like baseball, but they should all still apply and make sense.

If I’m betting on which MLB players will hit home runs today, these are the three I’d start with. I’ll dive into each pick a bit deeper below.

“Safe” HR Pick for Monday – Yordan Alvarez (+306)

There’s no such thing as a truly “safe” pick of any kind – let alone MLB home run bets. That said, we get Yordan Alvarez at kind of an insane price tag. Not only is he priced at +306, but he’s in the best hitter park possible.

Alvarez and his Houston Astros get a massive park upgrade, even though it’s not super hot at Coors Field and the wind is actually blowing in. It’s important to remember that this park is actually most ideal simply for hits (#1), but the elevation and park design still help it rank 10th in home runs.

Alvarez also comes into this matchup with four dingers to his name this year already. As if all of that wasn’t enough to get you to click his name at DraftKings, we know he can mash righties, and today he goes up against a beatable one in Ryuan Feltner.

Feltner generated a disturbing 14% walk rate and a 19% K rate against lefties a year ago, but it’s his .190 ISO and 57.8% hard hit rate that we’re after. Alvarez’s power against right-handed pitching wasn’t great last year, but he’s so far displayed a .333 ISO versus righties in 2026.

This is a long-winded way of saying Yordan Alvarez is a really good bet to go yard, and he’s incredibly mispriced despite that fact.

Monday’s Best Home Run Value Bet – Ronald Acuna Jr. (+488)

My favorite MLB home run value pick for Monday is Ronald Acuna Jr. to go yard. The Atlanta Braves stud has yet to launch one into the stands this year, but we’re looking at a pretty absurd price (+488) for a guy that definitely has power.

Acuna has been battling health woes for the last two years, but in his last full season in 2023, he sent 41 balls into the cheap seats. Acuna’s current form is definitely suspect, but I am willing to risk it for this awesome price, especially since he’s in a really nice park for power.

Monday’s game is in L.A. against the Angels, and Angel Stadium ranks 7th for home runs. Not only that, but Acuna can wield his stick against Jose Soriano, who doesn’t offer an elite strikeout rate and gave up a 58% hard hit rate to righties in 2025.

On top of that, this game has some of the best weather we can ask for. It’s sunny and 69 degrees, while the wind is blowing out to left field. Acuna’s power has an excellent chance of waking up in this spot and returning elite betting value in the process.

Longshot HR Pick for 4/6 – Nathan Church (+850)

Want even more compelling odds? I’ve got you covered, as St. Louis Cardinals youngster Nathan Church looks like a fun flier due to his +850 price tag.

This one isn’t so much about the park factor or weather. Nationals Park ranks just 19th in terms of power, while it’s not ridiculously warm (61 degrees) or windy 9 mph cross winds. Church is far from a household name, too, while the 25-year-old hasn’t done much to even warrant a spot in the starting lineup so far in 2026.

However, Church flashed solid power (.190 ISO) in the minors in 2025, and today he can swing his bat against Zack Littell, who can have trouble against lefties. Littel’s .273 ISO and 50% fly ball rate this year seem quite attackable, while last year’s .195 ISO was still not great.

This MLB HR pick is admittedly a shot in the dark compared to my other two bets, so use this one sparingly – and ideally as a solo bet.

Betting on MLB Home Runs on Monday

That does it for Monday’s MLB HR picks. You have one somewhat safe home run bet via Alvarez, a second safe-ish play with more upside via Acuna, and a big swing with Church at his staggering +850 odds.

No HR bet is ever safe, so you really need to find a nice combination of splits, power, weather, park factor, and odds.

As usual, feel free to mix in big sticks like Shohei Ohtani and Cal Raleigh if you’re piecing together MLB HR parlays, but the pricing is good enough to just attack these bets individually.

2026 Masters Betting Guide: Odds, Favorites & Best Props

The 2026 Masters tees off at Augusta National on April 10-13, and the betting market is already loaded with value. Scottie Scheffler enters as the consensus favorite at +450, but a stacked field featuring Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, and a resurgent Jon Rahm makes this one of the most wide-open Masters in years. Here’s everything you need to know to bet the tournament — from outright winner odds to the sharpest prop plays on the board.

2026 Masters Odds: Who’s Favored to Win the Green Jacket?

Outright winner odds shift constantly in the week leading up to the Masters, but here’s where the top contenders sit as of early April. These odds come from a survey of major US sportsbooks — always check your platform for the latest numbers before placing a bet.

Scheffler is the obvious frontrunner — the man has won two of the last three Masters and finished T2 in the other. At +450, you’re getting roughly an 18% implied probability on the best golfer in the world at a course he’s practically memorized. The real question isn’t whether he can win — it’s whether the price is worth it. For context, Tiger Woods never went off shorter than +350 at Augusta in his prime.

The value plays start in the +1400 to +3000 range. Jon Rahm at +1400 has the talent and the Augusta pedigree (he won in 2023), and his form coming out of LIV has been trending up. Ludvig Åberg finished T2 in his Masters debut and has the ball-striking profile that Augusta rewards. And Collin Morikawa — two majors, elite iron play, quietly dangerous on these greens.

Types of Masters Bets: Beyond the Outright Winner

Picking the outright winner is the marquee bet, but it’s also the hardest to hit in all of sports betting. A typical Masters field has 87 players — you’re essentially betting on a 1-in-87 outcome. Fortunately, sportsbooks offer dozens of other ways to bet on the Masters with much better odds of cashing.

Top 5 / Top 10 / Top 20 Finishes

Placement bets are the sweet spot for golf betting. A top-5 finish at +250 means your golfer just needs to land in the top 5 — no championship required. These are ideal for players who consistently contend but might not win. Think of Schauffele (seven top-10s in the last eight majors) or Viktor Hovland (three straight Masters top-15s). You can also ladder your exposure: take a longshot outright at +5000 and hedge with a top-20 at +180.

Head-to-Head Matchups

Matchup bets pit two golfers against each other — whoever finishes higher wins. This is where course-specific knowledge pays off. Augusta rewards length off the tee and precise approach play on par-5s. A player like Scheffler (who gains 2.1 strokes per round on approach at Augusta) has a clear edge in matchups against shorter hitters, even if the other player is ranked higher overall. Most sportsbooks offer 30-40 matchup pairings per major.

Round and Tournament Props

Props let you bet on specific outcomes beyond just finishing position. Tournament props include: Will there be a hole-in-one? (usually around +180), Will anyone shoot 63 or better? (around +300), and the winning margin — over/under 2.5 strokes. Round-by-round props are where the real action is: first-round leader, top nationality, and whether a specific player will make the cut.

Player Props

Player-level props zoom in on individual performances. You’ll find lines on a player’s first-round score (over/under 70.5 for Scheffler), total birdies for the tournament, and whether they’ll hit a specific number of fairways. DraftKings typically offers the deepest player prop market for golf majors, with 40+ props per marquee player. FanDuel focuses on fewer but sharper lines.

Best Masters Betting Strategies for 2026

Golf betting has a bigger luck component than team sports — one bad tee shot on Amen Corner can end a tournament. But there are edges if you know where to look. These strategies are specifically tuned for Augusta National.

Prioritize Course History Over Current Form

Augusta is one of the most course-specific venues in golf. Certain players just “see” the layout — their ball-striking and short game fit the demands of the greens, the doglegs, the elevation changes. Since 2015, players with at least two prior top-10 finishes at the Masters have won 70% of the time. Current PGA Tour form matters, but Augusta form matters more. Cross-reference both before betting.

Target Strokes Gained: Approach as Your Key Stat

Augusta’s greens are the most complex in major championship golf — multi-tiered, lightning-fast, with slopes that punish anything more than 20 feet from the pin. The stat that correlates most with Masters success is Strokes Gained: Approach the Green. Scheffler leads the PGA Tour in this category. Morikawa is top-5. Rahm is top-10. If a player isn’t elite at hitting greens in regulation from the right angles, their chances drop significantly — regardless of how well they putt.

Bet the First-Round Leader Market

The first-round leader (FRL) market is one of the most inefficient in golf betting. Since the field is so deep, FRL odds are inflated — even for favorites. Scheffler’s FRL line typically sits around +800, meaning a $25 bet pays $225 if he leads after Thursday. The beauty of this bet is that it resolves in one day, so your bankroll isn’t tied up all weekend. Look for players who historically start fast at Augusta — strong Thursday performers tend to repeat.

Our 5 Best Masters Prop Bets for 2026

Props are where golf betting gets fun — and where casual bettors can find real edges because the market is less efficient than outrights. Here are five props we’re watching heading into tournament week.

1. Hole-in-one during the tournament: Yes (+180). The par-3s at Augusta — especially No. 12 (Golden Bell) and No. 16 — produce aces almost every year. Since 2010, there’s been at least one hole-in-one in 11 of 14 Masters. At +180, you’re getting nearly 2-to-1 on something that hits roughly 78% of the time historically.
2. Scottie Scheffler top-5 finish (-120). In his last four Masters starts, Scheffler has finished 1st, T2, 1st, and T10. A top-5 at -120 is almost free money given his Augusta track record — and it hedges nicely against an outright bet on someone else to win.
3. Rory McIlroy to make the cut (-450) + top-20 (-110) parlay. McIlroy has made 10 straight Masters cuts and finished in the top-20 in six of them. Pairing these into a small parlay boosts the payout on what feels like a near-certainty.
4. First-round leader: Collin Morikawa (+2500). Morikawa is a fast starter in majors — he led after Round 1 at the 2021 Open and the 2024 PGA. At +2500, a small bet carries massive upside.
5. Winning margin: Over 2.5 strokes (+160). Augusta has produced dominant wins recently — Scheffler won by 4 in 2024. When a player gets hot at this course, the field often can’t keep up. The over on margin has hit in four of the last seven years.

Where to Bet on the 2026 Masters

For a tournament like the Masters, you want a sportsbook with deep prop markets, competitive outright odds, and smooth live betting during tournament rounds. Here’s how the big three compare for golf majors specifically.

DraftKings leads the pack for Masters betting — they typically post 70+ player props per top golfer, the deepest matchup menu in the market, and aggressive odds boosts during major championship week. FanDuel offers the sharpest outright winner odds and a clean same-game parlay builder for golf. BetMGM stands out for live betting during tournament rounds, with real-time odds that update hole by hole.

As always, having accounts at two or three sportsbooks lets you line-shop for the best price. A +1400 on Rahm at DraftKings vs. +1200 at FanDuel is a 16.7% difference in potential payout — that adds up fast over a weekend of betting. For more platform details, see our best betting sites rankings.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sports Betting Is Wrecking America’s Credit Scores — The Fed Just Proved It

For years, the gambling industry has maintained that legalizing sports betting brings sports wagering out of the shadows, protects consumers, and provides a massive new tax revenue stream for states. While the tax revenue part is undeniably true, a landmark new study from the New York Federal Reserve is blowing a massive hole in the “consumer protection” argument.

According to the report released in late March 2026, the rapid expansion of legal mobile sports betting is directly linked to plummeting credit health across the United States.

The data paints a grim picture: in the 30-plus states that have legalized mobile wagering since 2018, credit delinquencies have spiked, bankruptcy rates have jumped, and the average credit score has dropped. The financial carnage is most severe among young men, the exact demographic most heavily targeted by sportsbook advertising.

This is not an anti-gambling advocacy group making these claims. This is the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, using massive datasets of consumer credit reports to track exactly what happens to a state’s financial health the moment the sportsbooks go live.

The 10 Percent Spike in Delinquencies

The NY Fed researchers analyzed credit report data before and after legalization in various states. What they found was a clear, measurable “deterioration in repayment performance” that tracked perfectly with the arrival of legal sports betting apps.

Overall, credit delinquency rates—meaning payments on credit cards or auto loans that are 90 days or more past due—rose by 0.3 percent in states where betting was legalized.

While 0.3 percent might sound small, it represents a massive number of individuals falling behind on their bills across a state’s entire population. But the real story is found when you zoom in on the actual bettors.

According to the study, among the estimated 3 percent of the population who actually took up sports betting, credit delinquencies spiked by a staggering 10 percent.

“Following the legalization of sports betting in a state, credit delinquencies increase, driven by those under 40 years old,” the report stated bluntly. The researchers also noted “spillover effects” into neighboring states where betting is not yet legal, as residents simply drive across the border to place their wagers.

The Gen Z and Millennial Debt Crisis

The financial damage is not distributed equally. The NY Fed study, along with a separate but equally damning 2026 paper from researchers at UCLA Anderson, Harvard, and USC Marshall, highlights that younger Americans are bearing the brunt of the crisis.

The UCLA/Harvard study found that the odds of a bankruptcy filing in states with legal online betting increased by 25 to 30 percent. A separate analysis by Fortune noted that credit delinquencies surged by an incredible 26 percent specifically for bettors under the age of 40.

This demographic reality aligns perfectly with the marketing strategies of the major operators. Sportsbooks have spent billions of dollars on advertising featuring celebrities, athletes, and influencers specifically designed to appeal to Gen Z and millennial men. The gamification of the apps—with constant push notifications, live in-game betting, and “risk-free” promotional offers—is built to drive engagement from a generation raised on smartphones.

Christopher Welsh, an addiction psychiatrist at the University of Maryland, told NPR that the landscape has fundamentally shifted. “It’s almost all online sports betting now,” Welsh said. He noted that he is increasingly hearing from parents who receive calls from bookies or collection agencies because their high school or college-aged children owe tens of thousands of dollars.

A “K-Shaped” Credit Economy

The NY Fed findings arrive at a time when the broader American credit landscape is already showing signs of strain. The national average FICO score has dipped to 714, down two points over the last year.

However, credit experts point out that we are experiencing a “K-shaped” credit economy. Ethan Dornhelm, head of scores analytics at FICO, recently noted that there is a record share of consumers demonstrating strong credit behaviors, pushing their scores higher. At the same time, consumers at the bottom of the K are seeing their financial health deteriorate rapidly.

Sports betting appears to be a significant downward force on that lower arm of the K. Matt Schulz, chief credit analyst at LendingTree, explained the dynamic to CNBC: “Most Americans have precious little margin for error when it comes to their finances, and while sports gambling can help in that area when you win, the truth is that it is far more likely to end up hurting more than it helps in the long run.”

This creates a dangerous cycle. A young bettor living paycheck to paycheck hits a bad streak, maxes out a credit card to chase their losses, and suddenly finds themselves 90 days delinquent. Their credit score tanks, making it harder to secure an auto loan, rent an apartment, or even pass a background check for a job.

The $167 Billion Question

The scale of the industry makes these individual financial tragedies a macroeconomic issue. In 2018, before the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting (PASPA), Americans legally wagered roughly $7 billion on sports, almost entirely in Nevada.

By 2025, that number had exploded to $167 billion—a nearly 24-fold increase in just seven years. The American Gaming Association projected that $3.3 billion was wagered legally on the 2026 March Madness tournaments alone, a 54 percent jump over the past three years.

With over half a trillion dollars wagered since 2018, the profits for the operators are massive. But those profits are heavily concentrated. A 2024 Wall Street Journal investigation found that 70 percent of the profits from one major online gambling company came from less than 1 percent of its users.

The industry relies on a small percentage of high-volume bettors to generate the vast majority of its revenue. The NY Fed data strongly suggests that a significant portion of that revenue is being funded by credit card debt and missed loan payments.

What Happens Next?

The gambling industry has historically relied on the argument that adults should be free to spend their entertainment budget however they choose. Ted Rossman, a senior industry analyst at Bankrate, summarized this view: “It’s okay to spend money on the occasional indulgence… you just need to budget for it.”

But the NY Fed study challenges the idea that sports betting is just harmless entertainment. When a single industry causes a measurable, state-wide drop in credit scores and a 30 percent increase in bankruptcies, it stops being a personal budgeting issue and becomes a public policy crisis.

As the data continues to mount, pressure will inevitably build on state regulators and federal lawmakers to intervene. We are already seeing pushback, from proposed bans on college prop bets to discussions of federal excise taxes on gambling revenue.

The “Wild West” era of mobile sports betting expansion is likely coming to a close. The NY Fed has provided the receipts, and the bill is coming due.

If you are looking to better understand how sportsbooks operate and how to manage your bankroll responsibly, you can read our guide on best sports betting apps.

If you or someone you know is struggling with sports betting debt or gambling addiction, please visit our responsible gambling resources for immediate help and support.

Polymarket Pulled a Bet on Nuclear War — Here’s What That Says About Prediction Markets

Prediction markets have built their reputation on a simple, ruthless premise: if something can happen, you should be able to bet on it. The entire value proposition rests on the idea that crowds with money on the line produce better forecasts than pundits, polls, or government agencies. But in early 2026, the industry found a line it was not willing to cross.

Following the escalation of military conflict in the Middle East, Polymarket — the world’s largest crypto prediction market — quietly removed its markets allowing users to bet on whether a nuclear weapon would be detonated by the end of the year. The decision came after massive public backlash and highlights a growing existential crisis for the industry: where is the ethical boundary for betting on real-world events?

As these platforms fight for mainstream legitimacy and U.S. regulatory approval, the nuclear war controversy proves that the “Wild West” era of prediction markets is coming to a forced end.

The Market That Went Too Far

The controversy began when users noticed several active markets on Polymarket with titles like “Nuclear weapon detonation by…?” which allowed traders to buy “Yes” or “No” shares on the likelihood of a nuclear strike by specific dates throughout 2026.

These markets had existed for months in relative obscurity, attracting modest trading volume from the niche community of prediction market enthusiasts who treat geopolitical risk like any other tradeable asset. That changed dramatically on February 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel launched coordinated airstrikes on Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Overnight, the nuclear detonation markets went from academic curiosities to front-page news.

Trading volume surged as speculators rushed to price in the possibility of Iranian retaliation. At one point, Polymarket’s own social media accounts posted odds showing a roughly 22% probability of a nuclear detonation by year-end. The post went viral, sparking immediate and intense outrage across social media and mainstream news outlets.

The backlash was swift and bipartisan. Critics argued that creating financial incentives around global annihilation was not just distasteful but deeply cynical. Some pointed out that a market predicting nuclear war could theoretically incentivize bad actors to make the prediction come true — a moral hazard that no amount of market efficiency can justify.

By March 3, Polymarket had archived and removed all nuclear detonation markets from its platform without issuing a formal public statement. The markets simply disappeared, as if they had never existed.

Their primary competitor, Kalshi, faced separate but related scrutiny over a market regarding whether Iran’s Supreme Leader would be ousted. Kalshi ultimately issued refunds for that market, citing internal rules that bar wagers directly tied to death or assassination. The distinction between predicting a political outcome and profiting from someone’s death proved too thin for even the most libertarian-minded platform to defend.

The Scale of the Money Involved

The nuclear detonation markets were not trivial side bets. The broader ecosystem of prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi had attracted enormous capital to Middle East conflict wagers. A single multi-outcome prediction market on the timing of the strikes accumulated over $500 million in bets on Polymarket alone.

To put that in perspective, $500 million wagered on a single geopolitical event exceeds the total handle of many state-regulated sportsbooks during an entire NFL season. These are not small-stakes hobbyists making $10 bets for fun. These are sophisticated traders, crypto whales, and — as subsequent investigations would reveal — potentially people with access to nonpublic information.

The sheer volume of money flowing into these markets is what transformed them from an interesting experiment in crowdsourced forecasting into a political and ethical lightning rod. When millions of dollars are riding on whether a country gets bombed, the line between “prediction” and “profiteering” becomes uncomfortably thin.

The “More Money, More Problems” Defense

Prediction market executives have historically defended controversial markets by arguing that they provide a valuable public service: unbiased, crowdsourced forecasting that cuts through the noise of partisan media and government spin.

Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, speaking at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference shortly after the backlash, acknowledged that the nuclear markets were a “complicated question.” However, he maintained that prediction markets remain “innovative and disruptive” tools for discovering the truth. Coplan summarized the growing scrutiny with a dismissive shrug: “More money, more problems.”

The defense has a certain internal logic. If prediction markets accurately forecast election outcomes better than polls — which Polymarket demonstrably did during the 2024 U.S. presidential race — then perhaps they also provide valuable signal about geopolitical risk. A 22% probability of nuclear detonation is, in theory, useful information for policymakers, journalists, and the public.

But for regulators and the general public, the problem is not the information. It is the underlying morality of the contracts being traded. There is a fundamental difference between predicting an election outcome and creating a financial instrument that pays out when a nuclear weapon kills people. The former is a forecasting tool. The latter feels like something much darker.

The Insider Trading Threat

Beyond the ethical concerns of betting on war, the nuclear market controversy has exposed a critical vulnerability in the prediction market model: the threat of insider trading.

Crypto-analytics firm Bubblemaps recently identified six suspected insider accounts that made a combined $1.2 million wagering that the U.S. would strike Iran, placing the bets shortly before the military action occurred. The timing of these trades was suspicious enough to attract the attention of both journalists and federal investigators.

According to CNBC’s investigation into prediction market war bets, another single account — operating under the username “Magamyman” — made over $500,000 betting on the death of the Iranian Supreme Leader. The New York Times separately reported that hundreds of bets of at least $1,000 predicting an imminent American strike were placed in the hours before the operation began.

In traditional financial markets, trading on nonpublic material information is a federal crime prosecuted aggressively by the SEC and DOJ. But because Polymarket operates offshore and deals in event contracts rather than securities, the legal framework is murky at best. The Department of Justice has already begun investigating the prediction market industry, signaling that federal prosecutors are no longer willing to let these platforms police themselves.

The insider trading problem is not just a legal issue. It is an existential threat to the entire prediction market thesis. If markets are being manipulated by people with advance knowledge of military operations, then the prices are not reflecting genuine crowd wisdom. They are reflecting information asymmetry — which is the opposite of what these platforms claim to offer.

Lawmakers Push for Sweeping Bans

The nuclear bet controversy has provided fresh ammunition for lawmakers who have long viewed prediction markets with suspicion.

In Washington, Democratic lawmakers have introduced legislation specifically targeting these types of wagers. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Representative Mike Levin of California proposed a bill that would strictly prohibit prediction markets from offering contracts that resolve on military actions, regime change, or deaths. The bill would apply to both domestic and offshore platforms serving U.S. users.

Separately, Senators Jeff Merkley and Amy Klobuchar introduced the End Prediction Market Corruption Act, which seeks to bar the president, vice president, members of Congress, and their families from trading event contracts entirely. One lawmaker bluntly characterized the trading on military outcomes as “worse than insider trading.”

The urgency from lawmakers is driven by both the ethical concerns and the scale of the money involved. When half a billion dollars is wagered on a single military operation, the potential for corruption and manipulation becomes a national security concern, not just a financial regulation question.

Neither bill has attracted Republican co-sponsors, reflecting the partisan divide on prediction market regulation. Many conservatives view these platforms as free-market innovations that should be left alone, while progressives see them as unregulated gambling operations that exploit human suffering for profit. The regulatory fear surrounding prediction markets is not new, but the nuclear war controversy has given it a concrete, visceral focal point.

The Path to Mainstream Acceptance

For prediction markets to survive and thrive in the United States, they must transition from offshore crypto experiments to regulated financial entities. The nuclear war debacle has made that transition both more urgent and more difficult.

Kalshi has already taken this route, operating under the oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and maintaining stricter compliance standards than its offshore competitors. Kalshi’s decision to issue refunds on the Khamenei market — while painful financially — was a calculated move to demonstrate that a regulated prediction market can exercise ethical judgment without destroying its core product.

Polymarket, while currently restricting U.S. users from its main platform, is reportedly planning a CFTC-regulated U.S. version. But gaining that regulatory approval will require the platform to prove it can enforce ethical boundaries, prevent insider trading, and implement the kind of compliance infrastructure that its crypto-native user base has historically resisted.

The industry also faces a more fundamental question: can you build a profitable prediction market business while excluding the most controversial — and therefore most heavily traded — contracts? The nuclear war markets attracted enormous volume precisely because they were shocking and high-stakes. If regulators force platforms to exclude contracts on war, death, and catastrophe, will enough trading volume remain to sustain the business model?

What This Means for Bettors

If you currently use prediction markets, the nuclear war controversy should prompt some serious reflection about the platforms you are trusting with your money.

Offshore platforms like Polymarket operate outside the reach of U.S. consumer protection laws. If the platform makes a unilateral decision to archive a market — as it did with the nuclear detonation contracts — you may have limited recourse to recover your position. The lack of regulatory oversight means that disputes are resolved by the platform, not by an independent authority.

For bettors who want to participate in prediction markets with some degree of consumer protection, CFTC-regulated platforms like Kalshi offer a safer alternative. The tradeoff is a narrower selection of markets and stricter compliance requirements, but the benefit is operating within a legal framework that provides actual recourse if something goes wrong.

The question is no longer whether prediction markets work — they clearly do. The question is what kind of world we are willing to let people bet on. And as the industry learned in early 2026, even the most permissive platforms have limits they did not know they had until the world forced them to find out.

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