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If you want to succeed in sports betting in the long term, you simply cannot underestimate the importance of bankroll management. In an age where betting opportunities are at your fingertips 24×7, the ability to be disciplined is key. Do not be swayed by the avalanche of bets now available on any big game, it is more important than ever before to be selective.
There are so many gambling strategies and systems you can use to ensure effective sports betting bankroll management. Based on our own experience, we’re going to show you exactly how you can make the most of your betting bank and give yourself the best possible chance of long-term sports betting success.
What is a Bankroll in Betting?
If you’re wondering, this describes the amount of money that you set aside for sports wagering. Typically, you’ll deposit this into your chosen sportsbook account, creating a fixed sum to bet with during a specified timeframe.
‘Bankroll management’ simply refers to the subsequent organization and deployment of this money, ensuring that you have enough to cover your desired bets without ever wagering outside of your financial means.
Because of this, effective bankroll management solves the perennial issue of responsible gambling, which can affect bettors of all ages and experience levels. It also helps to introduce order and strategy when betting on unpredictable sports events, especially in calculating stake amounts using the odds and implied probability of a particular outcome occurring.
Gavin BeechiGaming Expert
Is Bankroll Management Important?
Bankroll management in sports betting should not be underestimated by anyone looking to be profitable in the long term. Managing your betting bank ensures that you do not overbet on individual wagers and will always have sufficient funds to ride a losing spell, which you will have at some stage. It is impossible to make it as a professional sports bettor without being good at managing your money.
- Unit bet stake – Once you have a defined betting bank, work out how much you want to have as a unit stake, or the amount you want to wager per bet. There are many different ways of calculating this but unit stakes tend to be 1-3% of a total betting bank.
- Become a value seeker – Concentrate on looking for value. It’s hard to find so it will help in improving your discipline as well as finding you wagers that can turn a profit.
- Don’t be derailed by bad fortune – Things are never going to go your way all of the time. When they don’t you mustn’t let this affect your betting patterns. Crucially, avoid chasing losses at all costs.
- Keep track – No pro bettor doesn’t keep track of their bets. Over time you will be able to build a profile of your betting that you can analyze for winning/losing patterns on particular types of bets.
- Work in periods – Try and base strategies and betting banks around seasons or specific periods. This way, you will give yourself valuable time for evaluation at the end of that period.
How to Manage a Sports Betting Bankroll
We have already covered some basics about bankroll management for sports betting, however, a solid strategy is important, and in this next section, our expert covers five concepts you can use with your own betting.
5 Key Points About Bankroll Management
Now that you have a broad understanding of how bankroll management in sports betting works, it’s time to drill down deeper into the finer points and principles. Each of these is key to successfully managing your bankroll over an extended period.
Determining the Size of Your Bankroll
As we’ve touched on, your bankroll should never exceed an amount of money that you can comfortably afford to lose. Of course, this will vary from one person to another. It should be based on your incomings and outgoings, but it’s important to ensure that your bankroll never puts your financial security or solvency at risk.
You can also take steps to boost the size of your bankroll without putting yourself at risk of financial harm. For example, you can bet smart and use welcome bonuses and free bet offers to create fixed amounts of free play when you register for an account while ensuring that the wagering requirements associated with each promotion don’t force you to bet outside your means.
Understanding a ROI in Sports Betting
ROI stands for ‘Return on Investment’, and is a broad financial term that’s in widespread use. In the case of sports betting, ROI provides a measure of how much your bankroll has increased during a predetermined period, while it can also be used to describe your level of return on a single wager.
This is an excellent measure of whether you’re placing good or bad bets, while it may also highlight issues surrounding individual stake amounts and the odds at which you wager. We’d recommend that you measure ROI during the period that your bankroll covers, whether this is monthly or during the regular NBA or NFL season.
Betting in Units
A unit bet is a measure that’s used to standardize sports wagering performance, and it may be expressed as either a dollar or percentage value. You can usually calculate your unit bet by dividing your total bankroll by the number of wagers that you’d like to place during a particular season or tournament.
For example, let’s say that you establish a bankroll of $2000 for the 2024/25 NFL regular season.
Simply divide this by the number of game weeks ($2000 / 18) to create a weekly budget of $111.11, which you can then divide further by the precise number of matches you choose to bet on.
This process creates an average unit bet that you can adjust depending on your choice of the market and the associated odds.
When dealing with percentage terms, you should broadly aim to create individual betting units that are between 1% and 5% of your bankroll. However, it’s rare to see professional and successful bettors wager more than 1% of their bankroll on a single event, so aim to cap units at no more than 3%.
Evaluate Your Bankroll Often
We’ve already discussed the importance of regularly evaluating the ROI produced by individual bets and your bankroll. However, you should also review and analyze your sports betting bankroll in relation to other factors, such as your wider financial circumstances, the deployment of bonus offers, and any profits that you’ve been able to bank.
In some instances, you may be able to incrementally increase your bankroll, so long as this remains within your broader financial means. However, you may also have to reduce your bankroll in some instances, such as a reduction in income or a rise in your general cost of living.
Become an Expert in One Sport
You can’t be an expert in multiple sports, no matter what you think. Focus on one sport and build expertise around its teams, players, events, and betting markets.
The more expertise you build, the sooner you will be able to spot patterns and trends that will lead you to value wagers. Being able to react to erroneous lines or odds faster than other bettors will give you a crucial edge because once the value is gone, you’ve missed that opportunity.
Gavin BeechiGaming Expert
Betting Systems and Bankroll Management
There are many betting systems and strategies, but here are five of the most commonly used.
- Martingale – Originating from 18th-century France, the Martingale system requires a bettor to double his stake after each loss, ensuring that a winner recovers all previous losses and bears a small profit.
- Kelly criterion – The Kelly criterion, created by John L. Kelly in 1956, is a formula that calculates the optimal amount you should bet depending on the difference between the true odds and available odds.
- Labouchère system (also referred to as the Split Martingale) – Here, a bettor’s strategy revolves around how much money they want to win and from how many bets. With each successful bet, the first and last numbers on the list are removed. You then continue to do this until all numbers are crossed out.
- Anti-martingale (also referred to as Reverse Martingale) – This simple strategy involves halving bets after each loss and doubling stakes after a win.
- d’Alembert system – The most simple strategy of them all. You pre-determine a winning goal and stop once that amount is achieved. Stakes are doubled until you hit the goal amount.
Your choice of a betting system will depend on how you approach sports betting. All of the above systems demand strong discipline, so no matter which one you choose, you must resist the temptation to place one more bet after reaching your goal.
This is easier said than done, especially on a busy sporting day, but if you want to maximize your chances of success, you cannot negotiate on this element of sports betting bankroll management.
How does Betting Bankroll Management Work?
The really good news is that bankroll management in sports betting is relatively straightforward. It is not some mystical power just for the pros. Successful bankroll management depends largely on your ability to adhere to a predetermined set of rules and wager in a disciplined manner at all times. Here’s a brief overview of the rules and mechanics that underpin solid bankroll management.
- Set your bankroll at an amount that you can comfortably afford to lose
- Ensure that this covers a fixed period or season duration
- Calculate your average unit bet to create a typical, single stake amount
- Refine your stakes for each selection according to your analysis of the odds and implied probability
- Track your bets and their performance to derive insights for the future
Risk Management and Smart Wagering
Successful money management in sports betting involves several different strategies. Some of these are quite complex and widely used by professional bettors, while others are more suited to beginners. Either way, the focus is on managing risk and increasing the prospects of long-term success.
Confidence Models
A ‘Confidence’ model encourages you to increase your unit bet in games where you feel more confident about the outcome, whether this is the result of your analysis or the odds that have been provided by sportsbooks.
Let’s say that Manchester United are priced at 5/9 to beat Fulham in the Premier League. However, your analysis of United’s current form and Fulham’s poor performance on the road (allied with their absence of key players) may make you think that the Reds Devils should have an even shorter price. So, you may increase your stake amount or introduce spread betting to pursue much higher returns.
In this case, your initial betting unit will remain unchanged. However, you could look to multiply this by two, three, or even five units under the guise of the confidence model. This is often preferred by experienced sports bettors.
Flat Betting
This is the most straightforward sports betting bankroll management strategy and one that simply requires you to set an initial betting unit and not deviate from this. This essentially means that you’ll stake the same amount on each match or outcome, regardless of confidence levels, odds, and your own form analysis.
So, you would wager the same amount whether you’re backing a -150 favorite or a +700 underdog. In some cases, you may decide to factor the sportsbook’s vigorish into your flat betting strategy. This is especially true when backing heavy betting favorites with American odds of -110, as you’ll need to incrementally increase your unit bet to 1.1 if you’re to win 1.0.
Regardless, the goal here is to keep your betting unit as consistent as possible and avoid incurring considerable losses. This strategy is focused on minimizing losses over time, even at the expense of potentially higher and increased returns.
Percentage Betting
The percentage betting model is similar to the flat wagering strategy. The only tangible difference here is that you set betting units according to the size of your bankroll, which is liable to fluctuate over time. However, you won’t factor in any alternative considerations.
Let’s say that you have $1000 left in your bankroll and are halfway through the NFL season. Your unit bet is 2.5% of this sum ($25), and your next wager wins at odds of 2.00. This immediately boosts your bankroll to $1050, and 2.5% of this sum will now be $26.50.
The main advantage of this strategy is that it enables you to capitalize on wins and responsibly increase your unit stake per bet. However, it also requires you to regularly recalibrate and calculate your bankroll, while a succession of losses can significantly reduce the amount you have to wager over time.
Top 10 List of Smart Wagering Models
Below you can see the full list of risk management and smart wagering models.
Each strategy has advantages and limitations, and they should be used in conjunction with sound bankroll management and thorough research to manage risk effectively.
Bankroll Management Tips from Our Sports Betting Experts
Bankroll management in sports betting is certainly key to your long-term success as a bettor, while there are various strategies to help you minimize losses and negate the risk of problem gambling. So, we’ve prepared some expert sports betting bankroll tips to help you make the most of your budget!
Avoid Betting on Bad Lines
Maximizing your bankroll in sports betting may depend in part on your ability to distinguish between good and bad betting lines. Remember, not all lines are created equal. While some offer inherent value, others may be priced erroneously and in a way that makes wagering prohibitive.
Online sportsbooks use a combination of detailed form analysis, head-to-head data, and similar metrics, but the key point is that lines will often vary from book to book. If you can build your own line-making system you will quickly be able to see which books lines are value and which are not.
You will also want to pay attention to your lines (and bets) against the ‘closing line value’ (CLV) metric. This tells you whether you’ve wagered at odds that are superior to the closing price (beaten the market) or achieved a negative CLV by failing to bet at optimal odds.
Stop Yourself from Chasing Losses
The key here is to build belief and confidence in your processes. Then, even when you suffer a loss or series of losses, you still retain faith in your methods. This is because you are showing overall profits and will continue to do so. Placing bets of lesser value to try and recover short-term losses is never a good idea. This is because it takes you away from your core goals.
Learn to become at ease with losses, in the same way that you shouldn’t go overboard in celebrating a winner. This way you will be much less inclined to go chasing.
Stick to Your Budget and Only Bet What You Can Afford to Lose
The main risk of chasing losses is that it encourages you to either wager more frequently or increase your stake amounts. Over time, this could cause you to bet outside of your financial means, breaking the single most important rule of bankroll management in the process.
Remember, your bankroll should include a finite amount of money that you can comfortably afford to lose, ideally within a specified period. Whether this is a week, month, or the duration of a competition.
Choosing the Best Payment Methods
Players now have a wide variety of payment methods they can use to fund a sportsbook or casino account. It is advisable to have multiple payment methods available as different sportsbooks offer specific bonuses depending on the payment method. Some of the more popular ones you can use include:
A large number of sportsbooks and online casinos also accept a wide range of cryptocurrencies.
Responsible Sports Betting and Wagering
No betting system or strategy guarantees success. You must focus clearly on the bankroll management and sports betting aspect to avoid losing more than you can afford. If you want more information about this then head to our Responsible Gambling page, or check out one of these free advice sites.
