Juice / Vigorish (Vig)
The bookmaker's cut on every bet, baked right into the odds.
Juice — also called vigorish, or just the vig — is the commission a book takes for accepting your wager. You won’t see it itemized on your slip. It’s wired straight into the odds, so the book earns no matter which side wins. The juice is how sportsbooks turn a profit and keep the lights on.
The textbook case shows up in standard spread and totals betting, where both sides sit at -110. At that price you risk $110 to win $100. If two bettors stake equal amounts on opposite sides, the book pulls in $220 in stakes but only pays $210 to the winner ($110 stake plus $100 profit). The leftover $10 — roughly 4.55% of the total handle — is the bookmaker’s margin.
In a perfectly efficient market with zero juice, both sides of a 50/50 proposition would price at +100 (even money). The gap between the real odds on offer and those fair odds is exactly what the bet costs you.
Example
A book offers a college basketball spread with Team A at -5.5 (-110) and Team B at +5.5 (-110). You bet $110 on Team A. If Team A covers, you win $100 in profit. If you lose, the book keeps your $110. Meanwhile another bettor put $110 on Team B at the same price. The book holds $220 total and pays $210 to whoever wins, pocketing a $10 margin.
If that same market ran at -105 a side, you’d only need to stake $105 to win $100 — lower vig, cheaper bet for you.
Key Points
- Lower juice is better for bettors: Hunting reduced-juice lines (-105 instead of -110) saves money over time and meaningfully lifts long-term profit.
- Juice varies by market and sport: Mainstream markets like NFL spreads usually run tighter juice than niche markets or props, where the vig can be a lot steeper.
- The vig is not the same as the hold: Juice is the margin on a single side; the hold is the overall percentage the book keeps from everything wagered on a market.
- Implied probabilities reveal the vig: Convert both sides of a market to implied probabilities and when they top 100%, that excess is the total overround — the bookmaker’s combined margin across the market.