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What is juice in betting

Even though hard research, good betting strategies and a bit of fortune can see you secure profits when betting on sports, the old saying that ‘you’ll never find a poor bookie’ still rings true. That’s because all betting platforms will include a house edge in their odds known as ‘betting juice’ or just ‘juice’. But what it is and why is it important?

James Pacheco

Sports Betting Editor

Last Updated: 2024-08-15

Fact checked by:

A. Tzamantanis

Sports Betting Editor

5 minutes read

How Juice Works

So what is juice in betting in practical terms?

When a bookmaker prices up a betting market, they will start by working out what the odds are on each of the runners. For example, the respective odds on each of the five horses in a horseracing event. They will do so to an 100% book, or an overround of 100%. Those initial odds would be totally fair with both favourites and outsiders offered at the exact odds they should be in terms of what the bookie perceives as the implied probability of each of the runners going on to win the event.

Why bookies have juice in their odds

But if those were the odds they offered to customers, the bookie might find that more often than not, they were very close to breaking even, with winning bets and losing bets by customers cancelling each other out. If their customers were particularly savvy (or in some cases particularly lucky) they may even lose money in the long run.

But bookies don’t want that. They always want to make a profit on all their markets. After all, just like any other business, they have costs like staff salaries, tax, betting licenses, electricity, rented office space and so on. If they didn’t make healthy profits on most markets, they wouldn’t be able to cover these costs, let alone show a profit beyond covering them.

So, they introduce ‘juice’ into their odds. In other words, all the odds carry a house edge that means that whatever you’re betting on, each runner’s odds are always slightly shorter than they should be.

The effect of that is that whereas the bookie keeps all your money when you lose, they also keep a cut of your winnings when you win by, paying out at shorter odds than what those odds actually should be.

Juice and Odds

It’s worth making two important points about juice to begin with:

Different bookies will adopt very different policies when it comes to how much juice their odds carry.

Bookie A may have a policy of their markets on average only having a house edge of 4%, which is pretty decent.

Bookie B might have 7-8%, which is still ok; anything more than that and the bookie isn’t laying you particularly fair odds.

Like Bookie C, whose average juice might be 12%.

Bookie A may have more customers and turnover than the other two because punters are attracted to their generous odds. However, Bookie C may have the least customers because of their stingy odds, but they’ll pay out less on each winning bet, so their overall profits may end up being quite similar to the other two.

When betting sites (such as this one) review bookies, they will give high scores to bookies with low house edges and low scores to bookies with high house edges, when specifically evaluating the generosity of their odds.

The House edge isn’t always exactly the same on all markets.

Even if a bookie has a policy of averaging 8% in juice across their markets, that doesn’t mean that every market will have a house edge of exactly 8% or that every single selection has precisely 8% juice built into their odds. Not only would it be impractical to always have exactly the same amount of juice, but bookies like to be a bit more flexible in their decision-making about their odds.

Impact on Winning

Let’s say Bookie B (average house edge 8% as per above) is laying odds on the 2-mile race at Epsom. It’s a five-horse race and on two horses their house edge is 7%, on two it’s 9% and on one- Jimmy the Giant – it’s 8%, meaning an average of 8% across the betting market as a whole.

So, when betting on Jimmy Giant at odds of 8.0 at Bookie B, those odds should actually be 8.64: the 8.0 that’s being offered, plus (or minus as the case may be) the 8% the bookie has inserted as ‘juice’. Jimmy the Giant goes on to win and your 10-unit bet returns 80.0 units (including stake). But in reality, it should have been 86.4 units if there wasn’t any juice at all.

Keeping that 8% from all your winnings adds up in the long run, allowing bookies to always make a profit.

Examples

And now for some more real-life examples of how bookies inset juice into their odds.

The toss in cricket

In cricket, you can bet on who will win the toss before the start of the game, the toss determining which captain chooses whether to bat or bowl first. So India are playing Australia and a Sportsbook with a juice of 8% is offering these odds:

Australia – 1.85
India- 1.85

As you can see, even though we know perfectly well that the odds on a coin toss are 50% (2.0), you’re only being offered 1.85 on each outcome. So if 10 customers bet on Australia and 10 on India for exactly the same stake, the bookie would make an 8% profit regardless of who wins the toss.

Match odds in football

The concept works in the same way on other sports and in cases where the odds on the different runners are very different.

Assuming it’s the same 8% house edge and that’s the one being used oin all thee selections here, let’s look at what the odds are and what they should be on Arsenal v Everton.

Odds without juice

Arsenal- 2.0
Draw- 4.0
Everton- 4.0

Actual Odds (with 8% Juice)

Arsenal- 1.9
Draw-3.6
Everton- 3.6

Things won’t always work out that the house always makes exactly 8% profit on the market as a whole. Which outcome was bet on most and at what odds the winning one came in at mean it’s not an exact science. But as long as bookies keep including their juice, they’ll always win in the long run.

James Pacheco Sports Betting Editor

James has been writing about cricket, football and tennis betting for the best part of 20 years for some of the biggest operators, websites and publications in the industry. Heroes and heroines include Paul Scholes, Chris DiMarco, Anastasia Myskina, Richard Gasquet, Nat-Sciver Brunt and Kumar Sangakarra.