Reddit Reveals the Best US Sports to Bet On
Fifteen years since its launch as a discussion website, Reddit is the 5th most visited website in the United States. It’s also one of the top 15 sites in the world regarding the visitor volume, with nearly half a billion monthly users.
You can think of Reddit as a collection of online forums, where users discuss practically everything. There isn’t a single topic that hasn’t been covered on the platform, which makes Reddit a great source of data.
In fact, many data analysts use this website as their main source for research. The question is whether you can use Reddit to become a better bettor?
Wisdom of the Crowd
The Greek philosopher Aristotle was the first one to come up with the idea of “wisdom of the crowd”, which suggests that decisions made by a group of people are usually wiser than those made by a single person.
Respecting the “wisdom of the crowd” is exactly how Reddit works.
This platform lets its users decide which posts are better than others by upvoting and downvoting. Thanks to this ranking method, those posts that Reddit users regard as quality content will get at the top of the search quarry. It’s basically how Reddit separates wheat from chaff.
So, how does all this apply to sports betting? Those betting-related posts that contain useful information are going to stand out from the crowd. By reading those, you might be able to find the key to getting better at betting.
If your question is which sports are best for betting, posts on Reddit will tell you the answer. The only problem is that there are literally millions of threads out there on Reddit, so finding relevant posts takes time.
Luckily for you, we’re here to help. We did our research, using Reddit as the no.1 source and here are the results we came up with!
Baseball for Betting Against the Public
Baseball seems to be the sport in which underdogs win more than usual. According to data from 2017, underdogs won 43% of the time in the regular season of the MLS.
The odds on those teams are way longer than the odds on favorites. This means that the bettors who backed underdogs during the 2017 MLS season made big profits. They made money despite the fact that the favorites won 57% of the games that year.
A year ago, one Reddit user started a thread about the most and the least profitable sports to bet on. A general conclusion was that baseball is very tricky to predict.
You can read the discussion here:
A similar discussion happened a year before, when basically the same conclusions were made:
In addition, Reddit users discussed betting solely on underdogs here:
Betting on underdogs dogs might be profitable for some, but there’s one Reddit user who claims to have turned $300 into $100,000 by betting mostly of big favorites.
Going by the nickname of shafiqde, the user did an AMA (ask me anything) which garnered nearly 200 comments, as well as an upvote percentage of 72%.
You can check the full discussion here:
Redditors Say Basketball is Easier to Predict
In basketball, upsets don’t seem to happen that often as in baseball. This makes basketball easier to predict. However, that’s just one of the reasons why bettors might want to focus on this sport.
Another reason is that there are plenty of games to choose from. For instance, an NBA team has to play 82 games during the regular season. Then there’s also pre-season, as well as playoffs.
Apart from the NBA, you can bet on college basketball, which adds a few thousand other games into the mixture.
In addition, there are also basketball competitions taking place outside the US, such as the EuroLeague. You can also bet on international basketball events like the FIBA World Cup or the basketball tournament at the Olympics.
The best thing is that, considering that this is a super-popular sport all over the planet, getting relevant info is not that hard.
Subreddits discussing basketball have millions of members. For example, the Reddit community r/NBA currently has more than 3 million members. This is the place where “all things NBA basketball” are discussed, which makes it a fantastic source of info.
If you want to narrow it down to betting topics only, we say go to reddit.com/r/nbabetting.
Football is Even Better, Says Reddit
Football is the most popular sport in the United States among fans. According to Redditors, it should be the most popular sport among American bettors as well.
There are a few reasons for that, starting with the fact that in the NFL, favorites win most of the time. Upsets happen less frequently than in other competitions popular in the USA, including the NBA, the NHL, and, of course, the MLB.
Another reason is that American bookmakers tend to give pretty decent odds on the NFL events. Sometimes, they might include some special bonuses as well.
If you are a knowledgeable football bettor, making NFL bets can be a pretty lucrative source of income for you. If you’re not a knowledgeable NLF bettor, you can become one with the help of Reddit.
There are several Reddit discussions you can join, including reddit.com/r/nfl and reddit.com/r/NFLstatheads.
College Football is the Best
The NCAA football might be the holy grail of American bettors. This championship seems to be the one in which the favorites win all the time.
Need evidence? Just take a look at the performances of the past seasons’ winners.
For instance, LSU Tigers, the team that won the 2020 CFP National Championship, won every single game in the regular season. This team was a huge favorite in most of those games.
Sure, the odds on NCAAF favorites might not be great, but there are plenty of games to bet on throughout a season.
Backing favorites will surely increase your chances of making profits. Still, to polish your college football betting skills even more, we recommend checking out some of the following Reddit communities:
Wrapping It Up
Whichever sport you decide to focus on in your sports betting adventure, you can’t hope for big profits unless you become good at it.
That said, there’s really no answer to the question of which sport is best for betting. It all depends on how much you know about the sport.
The good news is that in the era of internet, you can use websites like Reddit to school yourself. This is the place to go to get information relevant to sports betting.
Apart from the threads and communities that we’ve already discussed, there are a few other subreddits you might want to keep your eye on. Some of those include the following:
