NFL Futures Betting: Super Bowl 2013-14

Dec 2013

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Futures betting is nor as widely used due to the fact that it takes a long time to get a payout, as well as the fact that since it takes a long time for results to show, which means that during the NFL season and playoffs, anything can happen. This makes futures betting a wild bet, but this does not mean that you should avoid it, but rather embrace the possibility of a bet placed months in advance and getting a payout when you least expect it.

For those that do not know, Futures is a bet placed in the present for an outcome in the medium to far future, thus its name. When looking at football futures, there are usually three types of football futures that you can wager on:

Win Division
Win Conference
Win Super Bowl

This means that there are three times frames to take into account, end of the regular season (division winners), end of the playoffs (conference winners), and finally the end of the NFL season (Super Bowl winner). There are several different tips that you can take into account, if you want to make a futures bet that tend to look at early betting and late betting.

Early Futures Betting

These are bets placed on the futures well before the regular season has started, or is only just a few weeks in. These are tips for those that want to bet early and hope that their bets pay off after the entire season.

Don’t Decide Based on Schedule

A lot of football bettors decide who to bet on based on who the teams will be playing during the season. This would be like predicting the outcome of all of the matches a team will play during the season, all while wearing a blind fold. You can use the schedule in addition to looking at the current state of the team, but by itself it isn’t very useful, so don’t rely solely on the schedule.

Look to the Future, not the Past

Teams are never the same each year, even if they only suffer minor player changes. Take a look at the New York Giants, they won the Super Bowl in 2012, but failed to make it to the Playoffs the following year. You need to look at the teams current state, looking at how the team and players are performing, which is why it is a good idea to watch a few of the preseason and regular season games before making a decision.

New Players or Coaches

There is a big impact on a team when there are new players on the team, especially if it is a star rookie that has plenty of potential. Even changing the coaching staff can affect a team drastically. This is why you need to pay attention to these changes, and see where a team could be heading to. For example, the Chicago Bears used to be a defensive powerhouse, but currently they are focused more on offense than defense.

Late Futures Betting

This usually happens later in the season, when the regular season is drawing to a close. Many of the more experienced football bettors tend to wait until this time to place futures bets, if any. The reason for this is that anything can happen during the football season. A team can start strong, and end up choking in the final weeks of games. This is why betting late in the season is an actual tip for futures betting.

You can do a lot of things by betting later rather than sooner:

Make sure which teams have the best odds of actually winning their division, conference, or even the Super Bowl.
Close to the end of the season you will see how teams and players actually perform, after they have gotten used to new players/coaching staff, or even any changes that may have occurred during the season itself.
You will still receive good odds. Just because one team has a great record doesn’t mean the odds will alter that much. The reason is that there are always going to be more than just one great team in the NFL. The competition is always there, and that unpredictability is what keeps the futures odds level.
Avoiding the initial futures odds. At the start of the season, the futures odds are based on previous performances during the past NFL season. You will not get a good outlook of how teams will play based on past information.

Super Bowl 2013-14 Futures

The current top 11 teams in the Super Bowl futures are (based on the Bovada sportsbook futures):

Futures 2013

When looking at the Super Bowl futures, you need to also take into account that these teams also have to make it to the playoffs, and actually with their conference. At the beginning of the season, some of those teams were not even ranked as high as they are now, and some have even fallen back down after a few weeks. The Kansas City Chiefs were undefeated until Week 11 and their loss against the Broncos. Before the season started they were not even top 15 teams, half way through the season they managed their way up to top 6, and now they dropped to 11^th place. This is why it is important to follow those tips above, and try and make the best out of placing a futures bet.

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NFL Futures Betting: Super Bowl 2013-14

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