Are NFL betting odds inflated on Thanksgiving Day?
How much money your brother spent on the turkey and how “talented” your tone-deaf little niece is aren’t the only fibs flying this Thanksgiving.
If you’re a sports bettor – and you are – there’s a certain mythos that goes with NFL Thanksgiving Day odds, especially pertaining to the pointspreads. Word on the street is that sportsbooks inflate the favorites to protect themselves from the millions of well-fed casual bettors with the day off that love to lay the points in the holiday showcase games.
So we asked sports books in Las Vegas and online if Thanksgiving Day spreads are really stuffed like a turkey?
The answer is about as clear as your drunken uncle’s rant on “kids with cell phones”. But there are definitely some spoonfuls of “Yes” and “No”. When you get down to the giblets, it really depends on where you play.
“If I were an oddsmaker, and I was, I won’t change how I set the lines for the Thanksgiving games,” says Scott Kaminsky of TheGreek.com. “However, once the sports books get those spreads, they decide what they do with them. A good sportsbook manager knows his clientele. And if you have a customer base of mostly recreational bettors, yeah sure, you may want to inflate the lines.”
Kaminsky, whose customer base is considered one of the sharpest in the industry, says that years ago bookmakers could get away with inflating the lines for these big games, knowing the public would blindly bet the favorites.
“The days of puffing up the numbers, well, I think those days are gone,” he says. “We could make certain numbers a little higher. But the market is so much smarter now. You just have to make the numbers what you think they should be.”
Favorites are always popular public plays for the NFL standalone evening games, and the same goes for the trio of Thanksgiving contests. And more often than not, the home team is the one giving the points.
This year, hosts Dallas and Green Bay opened as favorites and the last two seasons saw all three homes favored. Over the past five seasons, there have only been three home dogs on Thanksgiving – the Detroit Lions were +3.5 vs. Houston in 2012, +4 vs. Green Bay in 2011, and are +1 against the Eagles this Thanksgiving.
“The favorites aren’t necessarily inflated but the home team has a bigger advantage, in my opinion, being on the short week and not having to travel and worry about family, etc,” says Michael Stewart, an oddsmaker with CarbonSports.ag.
Having all three favorites come in is a quick way to ruin the bookmaker’s holiday. That perfect storm hasn’t happened for a while, with the last all-chalk Thanksgiving coming in 2008 when the Titans, Cowboys and Eagles all covered in their respective games. The last two years, favorites are just 2-4 ATS but that doesn’t make books feel any safer this Thursday.
“Yeah, they usually are (inflated),” Jeff Stoneback, sportsbook manager at the MGM Mirage, says of the Thanksgiving NFL spreads. “If all three favorites hit, we can get hurt.”
Stoneback says the threat of a very chalky Thanksgiving isn’t as pronounced this season, thanks to some solid scheduling on the NFL’s behalf (Hmmm… the NFL doing the bookmakers a favor. Who’d a thunk it?). Unlike recent years, when Thanksgiving spreads touched double digits, the three games Thursday are very competitive matchups. The Packers are the biggest favorite at -8. Last season, the closing spreads were also short, at 7.5, three and one point.
According to Covers Expert Marc Lawrence - and his fabulous ATS stats engine - this is just the second time ever the Thanksgiving card has been an all-NFC affair - last year being the first. NFC favorites are 32-22 ATS on Thanksgiving since 1980, while NFC dogs are 20-33-1 ATS.
In Thanksgiving games involving a pair of NFC foes, the favorite is 22-14 ATS.
That’s a bitter record for sportsbooks to swallow going into the holiday. Almost as bad as Aunt Lucy’s annual “Potatoes au WTF”.
