What Tennessee’s 10% Hold Means for Sports Bettors

Silas Walker/Getty Images. Pictured: Jarrett Guarantano

Tennessee is the next state to join the legal sports betting market, going live Sunday, November 1. Four sportsbooks — DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM and Action 247 — will offer wagers from Day 1, with others assuredly coming soon.

Those who have followed the legal landscape closely over the last two years since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down PASPA in 2018 are aware that sports betting in the states is not a once-size-fits-all proposition. Each state gets to make its own rules and regulations, and some states are quite different.

Tennessee’s rules aren’t the worst in the country, but are definitely not the best for bettors, either.

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What’s Different About Tennessee: The 10% Hold

The Volunteer State’s legislation requires that sportsbooks generate at least a 10% hold – the percentage of money books “hold” after all bets have been settled. In financial terms, it’s gross revenue divided by the amount of dollars wagered.

For contrast, Nevada, the oldest state with legal betting, has holds in the 5-7% range. New Jersey, one of the first states to legalize betting in 2018 and one of the best examples of a well-run state in this regard, is right in the same range.

That difference might seem small, but it’ll actually mean a huge change in listed odds for bettors. The –110 lines you commonly see at sportsbooks or quoted on social media — those will likely be in the -120 to -125 range for either side of a bet in Tennessee due to the hold.

Or if books are able to keep odds down for common bets like spreads and over/unders, they’ll almost certainly have to increase the juice on other wager types — and likely on bet types that are harder to quickly spot the increase, like parlays, futures and teasers.

What the 10% Hold Means for Bettors

Again, paying an extra $10 to $15 may not seem like much on one bet, but it can really add up over time. For bettors who wager $100 on a game, that will translate to an extra $1,000 to $1,500 wagered across just 100 bets. It will obviously make it much more difficult to make a long-term profit.

For reference, here’s the breakeven point on odds — in other words, the percentage of bets you’d need to win long-term to just not lose money.

American Odds	Break Even Percentage
-105	51.20%
-110	52.38%
-120	54.55%
-125	55.56%

As you can see, even a small increase in odds drastically affects the needed win rate – and most bettors are likely right around 50%.

What complicates things even further is that illegal offshore betting is already quite popular in the U.S. Will bettors be willing to pay -120 to -125 odds or will they just not participate in the legal Tennessee market?

We’ll see what Tennessee does in the future: The state does have the flexibility to reevaluate the hold rule down the road. In order to have a healthy long-term market, they’ll likely have to change.

nguồn: Action Network https://www.actionnetwork.com/legal-online-sports-betting/tennessee-sports-betting-10-percent-hold-what-it-means
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