What are prop bets in sports betting?

Ready to learn an exciting form of gambling that is often highly profitable? Of course you are! Prop betting is fun and, contrary to popular belief, it’s not just for the Super Bowl. Prop bets are available on MLB, NHL, NFL, NBA, and many other sports.

Before we get into prop betting, we need to clear a few things up. Many think of prop bets as gimmicky side bets such as which team will win the coin toss or how long will it take for the singer to complete the National Anthem.

Yes, those are types of prop bets and there really is no skill involved in winning them. But there are prop bets that are less gimmicky and can actually be profitable long-term if you’re skilled.

What Is A Prop Bet?

A prop bet, short for ‘proposition’, is when you bet on whether something will or won’t happen. Chances are you’ve made one before.

“I bet you $5 you can’t get a hole in one!”

“I bet you $20 that New England will be the next team to score!”

To put into simple terms If the bet you propose happens just as you say it will, then you get a return on the money you staked on the wager. Any other outcome means you lose.

Types of prop bets

As discussed before a prop bet is a bet based on whether or not something will happen so the opportunities for creating your own bets are almost limitless. Any decent sports betting site will have a long list of available prop bets but with a lot of modern betting sites a customer can often create their own bet and be provided with the odds of it happening and then decide whether or not to make the bet.

Prop bets can be broadly split into two categories;

Individual player prop bets are based on the performance of a single player such as how many passing yards a QB will make in an NFL game or whether or not an NBA player will score during the game.

Team prop bets are based on the performance of the entire team such as whether or not they will win the game or whether or not there will be more or less than a certain amount of tackles or baskets made.

Which sports can you make a prop bet on?

A prop bet could be made for almost any sport but most commonly a prop bet is made on Baseball (MLB), Football (NFL) or Basketball (NBA). Of course that isn't an exhaustive list and a lot of online sportsbooks support betting in other sports such as Ice Hockey (NHL) or Soccer (MLS).

Further to picking which sport to bet on, there are often multiple levels of each sport, using Football as an example you could make super bowl prop bets on the final outcome or even calling heads or tails on the outcome of the coin toss. You could, however, bet on a lower level football game such as college football, there may be a more limited list of potential bets and likely much less interest from the wider betting community but the option is still there if you wish to take it.