Most sports bettors visit online sportsbooks to place their wagers. This gives you the thrills of making bets, and you can add to the fun by watching the games later.
But while online sports betting is fun, sometimes you may just want to wager with your friends. This adds a social aspect that internet sportsbooks can’t match.
The only problem is that placing bets with friends is harder than simply visiting a sportsbook. The reason why is because sportsbooks are organized and feature a large number of lines.
Making sports bets with your friends, on the other hand, isn’t so organized. But there are several ways that you can make this more structured and have fun in the process.
Keep reading as I cover 5 ways to wager on sports with your buddies.
By far the most common way that people bet on sports with their friends is through a March Madness betting pool.
As you may know, March Madness refers to the Division I Men’s Basketball championship tournament. Also called the NCAA Tournament, this event sees 68 schools placed into four regions.
Each team’s goal is to play their way through this single-elimination tourney to the championship. The schools will participate in the Sweet 16, Elite Eight, and Final Four if they keep advancing.
The excitement behind March Madness is that low-seeded teams sometimes upset high-seeded teams. This level of unpredictability is one reason why the NCAA Tournament is referred to as March Madness.
Bettors obviously enjoy this tournament, which is why it’s become one of the world’s biggest sports wagering events, along with the Super Bowl, Euro Cup soccer, NBA Finals, and the World Cup.
You can take advantage of all this excitement by starting a March Madness betting pool with your friends. Not only are March Madness pools popular, but they’re also easy to run.
The simplest way to start a March Madness betting pool is by using a bracket format. A bracket sees participants select the winner of every game.
Each round is assigned points that are determined by the person running the bracket.
First round = 1 point per correct guess
Second round= 2 points
Sweet Sixteen = 3 points
Elite Eight = 4 points
Final Four = 6 points
Championship = 10 points
The fact that later games count for more keeps these brackets entertaining the entire way through. Somebody who’s behind in the earlier rounds can come back to win by correctly guessing the later games.
March Madness brackets are fun for casual basketball fans, or even non-fans, due to the unpredictability involved. You’ve possibly heard about people who win a bracket pool just by picking teams based on the mascots or names.
All you need to do to run a bracket is gather friends who want to participate and collect their money. You then print off the brackets, with the scoring system listed, then distribute them to your friends.
Other ways to run a March Madness betting contest with your friends include a bidding pool, box pool, and lottery pool.
These three methods aren’t as popular as brackets because they’re more complicated than a simple bracket pool. But I’ll give a quick synopsis of each in case you’re interested.
Participants bid to get different teams from the tournament. The higher the seed, the more people are willing to bid.
The host collects all of the bid money, which goes into a prize pool. Bidding pools can either feature a single winner who picks the champion, or multiple winners who correctly select the Final Four schools.
Here’s a sample prize pool for the Final Four option.
Box pools involve creating a grid with a certain number of squares (e.g., 10). You also need to choose a specific game (e.g., championship or a Final Four contest), because the final score of the game plays a key role in box pools.
Players buy squares and write their names in them. Once all of the squares are sold, the host writes down numbers and puts them in a hat.
Players select numbers out of the hat and write them in their purchased squares in the top row, which is for the winning team’s score.
The numbers are placed back into the hat, and another drawing round takes place. Players write these numbers in the left-hand column going vertically, which represents the losing team’s score.
Finally, you and your friends watch the game to see the halftime and final scores. The goal is to be have the correct last digit of the winning and losing team’s score at the half and/or end of the game.
This means that there are two winners in a box pool, with the pot being split 50/50 between the halftime and final score winners. Of course, the same person can also win both halves of the pot if they have the winning score digits for both halftime and final scores.
Lottery pools begin with writing March Madness school names down and putting them into a hat. People draw the names out of the hat to determine their picks.
The winner is decided by who draws the champion, or the furthest-advancing school. Lottery pools normally see multiple drawing rounds to ensure that somebody picks the eventual champion.
Participants also need to draw numbers beforehand to see who picks first out of the hat. You should then follow a snake-like pattern to determine draws for subsequent rounds.
Super Bowl parties are already common among football fans. And this makes the Super Bowl a convenient time to place bets with your friends.
The first thing that you should do is let your guests know ahead of time that there’s going to be betting.
Not everybody should have to participate in the betting just to come to the party. But it’s nice to let those who are interested know ahead of time, so they come prepared with extra money.
The best way to offer betting at your Super Bowl party is through prop wagers. Super Bowl prop bets are huge at sportsbooks, and they can be equally fun amongst friends.
You can offer the bets separately, where everybody makes different wagers on each proposition. Or you can offer all of the bets in a single contest, and the winner is whoever correctly guesses the most wagers.
Here are some different Super Bowl prop bets that you can offer to friends.
These are just a few examples, and you can find many more just by visiting online sportsbooks in the days leading up to the Super Bowl. These sites are loaded with different prop bets ideas.
How you collect money depends upon if you’re offering single prop bets or a collective contest. You could require everybody to ante up $5 for each bet or have a single contest where everybody pays $25 to enter.
When holding a single prop betting contest, it’s good to score the most popular wagers higher. For example, the Super Bowl MVP, leading rusher, and leading passer would all receive more points than other prop bets.
Fantasy sports leagues have been a popular way for friends to bet on sports with each other for decades.
Friends can visit sites like CBS Sports, ESPN, Fleaflicker, and Yahoo Sports to quickly create fantasy leagues. And they can choose from several popular sports, including baseball, basketball, hockey, and football.
The league agrees upon a commissioner, who then sets the rules and invites players to participate.
Some friends hold free leagues, but the majority require a paid entry fee. These entry fees create a prize pool that can be paid out to the regular season champion and/or tournament champ.
I may not be telling you anything new about forming fantasy sports leagues with fees. But you can spice things up by adding prop bets on the side.
Here are some examples of prop bets that one of my fantasy football leagues has done over the years.
Not everybody is a fan of adding prop bets to a fantasy sports league. After all, this forces people to pay higher overall entry fees.
I’ve been in leagues where the majority of participants simply don’t want to do this. But a few of my fantasy leagues have been willing to try additional bets.
I especially like the one where the weekly high-points earner receives a prize. This is a good way to keep everybody engaged, especially those who are at or near the bottom of the standings.
Here’s an example of how you can mix prop bets in with the normal league fee.
As covered before, many sports bettors visit websites to place their wagers. This involves the sportsbook setting a line, and you and other bettors figuring out which side of the line offers the most value.
But recent years have seen peer-to-peer sports betting apps spring up. These are exciting because they allow you and a friend to bet on different sides of a line. Whoever picks the winning side of a point spread or moneyline is the winner.
Some of these apps even offer the option to form groups that are similar to fantasy sports. Your group makes wagers throughout a specified time period to see who correctly guesses the most lines.
The main downside to peer-to-peer sports wagering apps is that you can’t risk real money. Instead, these apps amount to social gaming with your buddies.
Another drawback is that these apps eventually call on you to purchase fake money to play.
This is nothing new in the social gaming world. But many bettors would rather spend their money on wagers where they can actually win cash.
Nevertheless, this can still be a fun way to place wagers with your friends online. And the best part is that you don’t need to host the party or print off brackets and physically give them to people.
Instead, the apps keep track of everything and allow you to bet with friends no matter how far apart you live. As long as you’re okay with the lack of real money betting, then peer-to-peer apps are an interesting way to wager.
The Oscars (a.k.a. Academy Awards) aren’t technically sports betting. But every major online sportsbook offers lines on the Oscars.
If you have friends who love betting on sports, chances are that they’ll also like wagering on the Academy Awards. This is especially the case with casual sports fans who enjoy many different types of entertainment.
Much like March Madness, you can also hold a betting pool/party for your friends. And the best way to start is by asking your friends if they’d be interested in such an event.
If there’s enough interest, you can proceed to decide how you’ll run the Oscars betting pool.
You need to figure out what would be a good entry fee for the pool. For example, you could require a buy-in of $20.
You also must set up a ballot by selecting the most popular categories from the 24 available Academy Awards. You can have all 24 categories, but I find that it’s more fun for the entire group if you only focus on the main awards.
Here are some examples of what you can list on your Oscars betting ballot.
You may even get input from your friends before finalizing the ballot. Once you agree on the categories, the next step is to set up a scoring system.
The biggest awards like Best Actor in a Leading Role should offer more points than things like Best Documentary Feature.
Here’s a sample scoring system.
One more decision involves whether you’ll have people make one or two choices in every category. The purpose of two choices is so that you can have a high-scoring pool and create more separation among the top players.
The final step is to get together and watch your picks play out at the Oscars. You can add up the scores as they’re announced so that you’re not overwhelmed at the end of the event.
The winner will be determined by whoever scores the most points on the ballot. You can either give the entire prize pool to the winner or spread it out among the top finishers.
Total prize pool is $200
Winner receives $110
Second place receives $60
Third place receives $30
Making sports wagers with your friends is a good way to spice up your betting action. This is especially the case if you have competitive friends who really get into the competition.
My personal favorite betting activities with friends include March Madness betting pools, Super Bowl parties, and fantasy sports leagues. But you can also use peer-to-peer apps as a fun way to enjoy social betting.
Oscars parties are perfect if you’d like to bring friends into betting who aren’t super sports fans. The Oscars are pretty universal because everybody knows famous actors, actresses, and popular movies.
One more point worth making is that you should always be aware of your state and/or country’s laws on sports betting.
I’ve never heard of somebody being put in handcuffs because they and a few friends made $5 Super Bowl prop bets with each other.
But some states can be pretty strict with recreational gambling laws. You can read up on your state’s gambling laws here.
Of course, you should have no problem with the legal side of things, as long as you keep bet sizes reasonable. And the host should never take a cut of the action (a.k.a. “juice”), because this essentially makes them an unlicensed bookmaker.
As long as you have the legal side of things under control, then you’re free to enjoy betting with friends. Furthermore, you don’t have to worry about paying the house juice, either!
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