Sports betting guides

Looking to place your first ever sports bet? Check BET.CA’s step-by-step guide for how to bet on sports to find out how to get set up with a sportsbook, deposit funds, and decide what to bet on. We also run through how sports betting odds work and how to use picks to help with your bets.

BET.CA has detailed guides for the most common and popular sports betting markets, including:

• Moneyline: Probably the most well-known and straightforward betting market around, it simply involves wagering on a team or player to win a match.

• Point spread: Betting the spread involves predicting whether a team will win or lose a match by a margin specified by the sportsbook.

• Total or over/under: This market requires you to predict whether the number of points, goals, or runs in a game will be over or under the total specified by a sportsbook.

• Prop bets: Prop bets are fun markets that focus on things not related to the final outcome of a game. These can range from how many runs a player will score in a MLB match to how long the national anthem will be at the Super Bowl.

You can learn more about each of these markets using the links above.

For many sports fans, betting adds another layer of enjoyment to following Canada’s biggest sports and unsurprisingly, the most popular sports and events in Canada to watch are also the most popular to bet on. These include hockey (NHL), football (NFL), baseball (MLB), basketball (NBA), and soccer.

Read our guide to the best sports to bet on for more information about each of these, including popular leagues and competitions, which markets are available, and notable Canadian teams.

Many bettors may understand how odds work and what different markets mean, but they may not know what role the “juice” or “vig” plays in this. The vig is essentially the house edge a sportsbook gives themselves to ensure they make money from the odds they offer, meaning it can have a large impact on your betting and the value and payouts you can get from odds. Read our guide to the juice/vig to learn more about this, including how you can work it out and remove it in order to see a sportsbook’s “true odds.”

As any bettor will tell you, your bets won’t win every single time and there’s no way of guaranteeing that they can. However, there are many helpful tips and points you can remember to place your bets from the best possible position.

Our how to win at sports betting guide runs through these, including how to find your betting niche, locate the best odds around, and other useful tricks and techniques. No matter how long you have been betting on sports, remember that there will always be more you can learn.