Betting on UFC | How Odd’s Work | What’s the Line?

Betting on UFC – How do the Odd’s Work…What’s the Line?

Betting on the UFC, or any MMA fights like Strikeforce, Affliction, WEC or boxing matches can be a little intimidating if you’ve never gambled on them before. Where are the odds? How much money should I bet? How much will I win? It looks a little complex, but let me break betting on the UFC down for you.

For an example, take a look at an upcoming line for UFC 92. This is for the Light Heavyweight UFC Championship.

Forrest Griffin -140
Rashad Evans +110

The numbers next to each fighters name is called the “moneyline”. These types of bets are a wager on if a fighter will win or lose the fight. Moneyline bets, often simply called the line, are available for any kind of fight and almost every major sport like basketball and football, and MMA.

Why is there one positive number and one negative number? The fighter with the negative number is the favorite, the fighter with the positive number is the underdog. Of course, favorite and underdog according to the “experts”. So in this case, Griffin is the favorite, Evans the underdog.

For a negative number (the favorite), the line is the amount you would win on a $100 bet. The favorite will always be fighting at less than even odds. So for UFC Champ Forrest Griffin, if you bet $140 you would make an additional $100 for a successful wager. You would get a total return of $240.

For a positive number (the underdog), the line is the amount you would win on a $100 bet. So for Evans, if you bet $100 you would gain an additional $110. You would get a return of $210.

So does this mean you have to wager at least $100 every time you want to put money on an MMA fight? Absolutely not. You can gamble whatever you like, just use this ratio to see how much you would win. If you divide the line by 100 you can get dollar odds, then multiply the dollar odds by how much you want to bet. For example, with Evans for every $1.00 you bet you win $1.10, so a 5 dollar bet would win you $5.50.

There is nothing that makes a UFC fight more exciting for you than having a few bucks riding on the outcome. You can bet anywhere from one dollar to thousands of dollars depending upon the sportsbook that you sign up for. We will look over the different sportsbooks and their pros and cons at a future post. For our next post, we will be looking at converting a line to a percentage and using this to figure out which UFC fighter to bet on.

I hope you enjoyed this article on moneylines and how they work. Good luck on your UFC bets!