What Is the Vig (Juice)?
The vig is the fee a sportsbook charges to take your bet. It's invisible if you don't look for it — and it's the reason the house wins even when the market is balanced.
On a standard point spread, both sides are priced at -110. Bet $110 on each side and you've staked $220; whichever side wins returns $210. The missing $10 is the book's commission — the vig, also called the juice.
Why -110/-110 isn't a coin flip
If the two sides were truly 50/50 and priced fairly, both would be +100 — bet $100 to win $100. At -110, the implied probability of each side is about 52.4%. Add both sides together and you get 104.8%, not 100%. That extra 4.8% is the overround, the book's built-in margin. This is why a bettor who picks 50% winners at -110 still goes broke slowly.
Overround = 52.4% + 52.4% = 104.8%
Book margin ≈ 4.8%
How to remove the vig
To find the market's true, no-vig probability, compute the implied probability of each side, then normalize them so they sum to 100%. This tells you what the sharp market actually believes, stripped of the book's fee — the foundation of line shopping and value hunting.
Example: both sides -110
Implied each = 52.4%, overround = 104.8%
No-vig each = 52.4 / 104.8 = 50.0%
Why the vig is everything
A recreational bettor paying -110 on every wager needs to win about 52.4% of bets just to break even. A bettor who shops for -105 prices needs only 51.2%. That 1.2-point gap, sustained over thousands of bets, is the difference between losing and winning. The vig isn't a detail — it's the central obstacle between you and profit.
Different markets, different vig
- Spreads and totals: typically -110 each side (~4.8% margin).
- Moneylines: margin varies with the matchup; lopsided games carry more juice.
- Player props and SGPs: higher vig, often 8–12%+ — harder to beat.
- Futures: the highest vig of all, sometimes 20%+ across the field.
Key takeaway: The vig is the commission baked into every price. Removing it reveals what the market truly believes — and spotting where a book's price is wrong relative to the no-vig line is how sharp bettors find value.