Easy Sports to Win Bets On and Why

Five Easiest Sports to Bet and Make Money

Before we get into the list, there’s one very important thing you need to recognize.

Knowledge = Power

The more you know about a sport – the more you understand the intricacies of the game and its rules, and the more familiar you are with its athletes and strategies – the more likely you are to place good, smart, winning bets on that sport.

As you look over this list, please keep that in mind. If you aren’t familiar with a sport, don’t bother trying to bet on it. If you are determined to bet on a sport you’re not familiar with, educate yourself first. Watch matches. Learn the rules. Find out everything there is to know about the teams and/or athletes who play it. I promise you, the more you know, the more (legitimately) confident you’ll be in your selections.

Here’s the basic list of easiest betting sports. Click on any one to learn why it made the list. Further along in this review, we offer statistics for underdog betting and other useful tips for making smarter bets.

1. Soccer
2. NFL Football 
3. Tennis
4. NCAA Football
5. UFC

#1 Soccer (European Football)

European football, or soccer as it’s more commonly known in North America, is considered the easiest of all sports to successfully wager on. There are a number of factors that went into this selection. First and foremost, it’s the most widely played and watched sport in the world. With multiple leagues all over the globe, and an estimate 3.5 billion strong fan base, you can generally find a plethora of matches taking place at any given time. Thus, the availability of soccer betting is unlike any other sport.

With so many matches taking place, a little research can go a very long way. When there’s a strong favorite to win, and the conditions are unspoiled, you can bet with confidence that your odds of winning will be considerably high.

• In-Depth: How to Bet on Soccer

#2 NFL Football (American)

There aren’t too many surprises in the American National Football League (NFL). Those who understand the fundamentals of the game, and what it takes to win, have an opportunity to win the majority of their bets.

That’s not to say a lot of people don’t lose money on NFL betting. Most of them are either making bad decisions based on bias, selecting only teams that performed well in previous weeks, or are omitting some of the most important research factors.

The best way to make money betting on football is to check out the opening lines. Oddsmakers are extremely good at predicting who will win, and setting their lines accordingly. But don’t place any bets yet. Follow the sports news to see what’s going on behind the scenes. Who’s in and who’s out. Will weather be a factor? Those opening lines tend to be spot on, but a lot can happen in the days between posting and kick-off. When the conditions change, so do the odds and probabilities.

Unless there’s a clear, conditional reason for it, try not to pay too much attention to line shifts, as they could mean a number of things. More often than not, it isn’t a shift in who the bookmaker expects to win, but who they need more people to bet on to the balance their books.

• In-Depth: How to Bet on Football

#3 Tennis

Tennis has to be the absolute easiest sport to bet on and win money. Why is it in our #3 position, then? We moved it down because it’s not every day, or even every week or month, that you can find these supremely easy bets. Plus, you’ll need some heavy cash flow to really take advantage of them.

There are only so many tennis tournaments that take place during the year. When they do, it’s only the early rounds that offer the closest thing you’ll find to guaranteed profits. All you have to do is find the world’s top tennis stars – players like Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal on the men’s side, or Ashleigh Barty and Serena Williams on the women’s – and bet on them in the early rounds of the tournament. These are the stars that always make it into the semis. They are almost always matched against new and unranked players early on. Betting on them at this stage is a no-brainer.

The problem, as I mentioned before, is that you’re going to need a whole lot of money to make a very small profit. The odds on these players winning are astronomical, often in the tens of thousands or more. Even a $10k bankroll won’t score you very much in the way of returns. If you can’t afford to lose that much, don’t make the bet, because there’s always that minuscule chance of something going wrong, such as an injury. It’s rare, but it can happen, so never, ever bet more than you can afford to lose.

• In-Depth: How to Bet on Tennis

#4 NCAA Football (College)

We chose NCAA college football as our #4 for one very simple reason. Underdogs don’t win very often in college – especially when it’s a big college up against a little one. It does happen, so don’t get too cocky, but you can make a lot of safe bets here if you do your homework. Much like tennis, though, anything can happen, so don’t bet the house. 

• In-Depth: How to Bet on Football

#5 Ultimate Fighting Championship

MMA sports are a lot like college football. It’s easy to identify heavy favorites. The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) hosts a lot of events, and its preliminaries can be the easiest to bet and win. It’s usually best to steer clear of the ‘big event’ fights, where the lines tend to blur between favorites and underdogs.

• In-Depth: How to Bet on UFC

Statistics for Favorites vs. Underdog Betting

If you’re the type to bet only favorites, this is one chart you need to see. It details how often underdogs defeated the favorites in 7 major sports over a five year period. The data was taken from five straight seasons, including all divisions and leagues (where applicable), between 2016 and 2020.

This table depicts just how often underdogs come back to win on certain sports – especially baseball and ice hockey. This makes these sports some of the harder ones to win money on. You’ll notice UFC is high on the list. This is why I suggest not betting on ‘big events’, but sticking to the easier-to-predict preliminaries. The same goes for NFL games, where it becomes all the more important to know your teams and stats. At the same time, we see that NCAA Football is the easiest to predict, where underdogs – especially long-odds underdogs – rarely overcome the favorites.

Also note, however, that these are basic statistics. They don’t take into account what the odds were on these match-ups. In every sports, the closer the odds are (+100 to +150), the more frequently underdogs will surprise. With odds of +300 or more, percentages tend to drop into the teens.

These next charts depict the percentage of underdog wins based on the odds presented by sportsbooks.

Major League Baseball – MLB

National Hockey League – NHL

Ultimate Fighting Championship – UFC

National Football League – NFL

National Basketball Association – NBA

NCAA Basketball (All Divisions)

NCAA Football (All Divisions)

More Useful Tips for Making Smarter Bets

Fav vs. Dog

Making smart bets isn’t just about betting moneylines on favorites. If it were that easy, Las Vegas would be a ghost town. The key is to pick the right favorites – the games where it seems nothing short of divine intervention is going to change the outcome.

Avoid Teams with Volatile Players

When studying probable win factors in upcoming games, pay close attention to athletes who may not be eligible to play come game time. Don’t just look for the common stuff, like injuries, but underlying problems like drug use, criminal charges and other rule-breaching behavior that could get an athlete benched. Something as simple as a petty argument with the coaching staff could impact play time. Even when the athlete is in the game, significant issues off the field/court could distract them from achieving peak performance levels. These situations can be hard to judge, so you’re better off steering clear of them altogether.

Develop a Specialty, Expand on It

It’s so hard to become an expert in everything. Instead, train your focus on a specialty. Pick a sport you already like, and devote your studies to it. Learn everything you can about the players. Watch Sports Center on TV, and listen to sports radio in your car. Once your knowledge is strong enough, then consider expanding into other sports related to your specialty. For example, if you choose NFL, expand into NCAA Football. Doing so will give you an inside line to the NFL draft and top rookies at the start of each season.

Be Patient

No one becomes an overnight success at betting. Sure, some have luck early on, but luck and skill are two very different things. Luck is volatile. Skill is reliable. It takes time to develop the kind of skill professional sports bettors posses. Start small, be persistent, learn what works and what doesn’t. With enough skill and just a little of that luck, you may soon discover your own perfect range of the easiest sports to bet on and make money.