What Does Handle Mean in Betting? – The Sports Betting Handle
Written by Dan Fitch
Updated: 03:01 am EST, 14/08/2024
‘Handle’ is a betting term that refers to the total amount of money bet on a sports event. We’re going to explore everything that you need to know about the question of what does handle mean in betting, so that you fully understand the topic.
How Does the Handle in Sport Betting Work?
Online sportsbooks keep meticulous records of how much money is bet on events and exactly what selection have been bet on. From a practical point of view, all of these bets have to be settled, so it’s necessary for any betting sites to have records of all the wagers placed, so that players can be paid out, once the event has finished.
Then, from a business perspective, sports betting operators need to know exactly how much was bet on an event, in order to work out their profit or loss, once all the bets have been settled. The results enable bookmakers to shape their strategies when pricing upcoming events.
What Does Percent Handle Mean in Betting?
With the data of how much has been bet and on who, betting companies can work out a percent handle. The amount bet on each outcome can be converted into a percentage, with the amount of outcomes ranging from just two, to dozens of potential possibilities.
The percentage can show the total amount of money bet on the outcome, or the total number of bets on that outcome, often referred to as tickets. The difference between the % money and % bet can be interesting, as it can highlight when sports bettors are placing big wagers on an outcome.
Of course, for any given event, sportsbooks offer many different online betting markets. This means they must work out the various percent handles for what you can bet on. Here are the three main markets that tend to attract most of the bettors’ money.
- Moneyline – This is a market where you can bet on the result of a sporting contest. For sports like football and basketball it is most common for the moneyline bet to just have the two options of either side to win. For sports where ties are common, like soccer, there can be a three-way moneyline.
- Spread – A spread is a market in which betting sites make result betting more even. Handicaps apply to favorites, which they must overcome, while the underdogs get a points advantage.
- Totals – Rather than betting on the result, a popular option is to bet on the total amount of points scored in a sporting contest. With a set total amount of points, you then bet on whether this is over or under this figure.
What Does Handle Mean in Betting by Sport?
Certain sports and events are more valuable to online sportsbooks than others. Let’s take a deep dive into some of the biggest Major Leagues and discover how much is bet on them.
NFL Betting Handle
A 2023 survey revealed that one in four eligible Americans place a bet on the NFL during the season. That amounts to 73.5 million US bettors, which is 28% of the American adult population.
It revealed the uprise in betting on football games in the US, following the increase in legal sports betting, licensed betting sites and the abundance of top offshore sportsbooks that are available. Much of this money is heading in the direction of the America’s most popular sporting leagues, such as the NFL.
Super Bowl Handle
The finale of the NFL season is the Super Bowl, which attracts a huge amount of spectators across the US and the world as a whole. While other leagues such as the NBA, MLB and NHL have a best-of-seven format for their season finales, the one-off nature of the Super Bowl helps to make it a huge event, that bettors love to gamble on.
Ahead of Super Bowl LVIII between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers, estimates forecasted that betting turnover of $23.1 billion on the event. Here’s how the Super Bowl betting handle broke down by percentage, for the main markets.
- Moneyline = Kansas City Chiefs 71% – San Francisco 49ers 29%
- Spread = Kansas City Chiefs 71% – San Francisco 49ers 29%
- Totals = Over 47.5 points 62% – Under 47.5 points 38%
NBA Betting Handle
From October through to June each season, the NBA provides a huge amount of games for basketball fans to bet on. After the regular season there are playoffs, culminating in the NBA finals.
Played over a best-of-seven format, the NBA finals attract a lot of interest from bettors. In 2024, the Boston Celtics went into the finals as the -225 favorites, against the Dallas Mavericks who were +180 underdogs.
A report at the time showed that bettors did not consider the Celtics to have much value at those odds. The Mavericks were attracting 80% of the handle and 85% of tickets as well. With the Celtics eventually winning the finals by a 4-1 scoreline, it’s safe to say that sportsbooks walked away with a healthy profit from this event.
MLB Betting Handle
Baseball is another sport which provides a huge number of games for fans to bet on. There are generally 13 games per day during the regular MLB season.
With so many games to analyze each day, the betting handle percentages can provide useful information for bettors. You can see breakdowns of the percentage of the number bets made on each outcome, as well as the amount of money bet on each.
In 2024, one bookmaker reported that they had taken a total of $630m of baseball bets over the first half of the season. This was a 100% rise on their online sports betting revenue and handle in the previous year.
The Handle in Betting on Horse Racing
Having explained the concept of the handle in sports betting, let’s take a look at how it applies to horse racing.
The sport of kings brings in a lot of revenue for betting sites, with a year round, seven days a week schedule, packed with race meets from across the US and the rest of the world. Like most sports, betting peaks for the biggest events. We’re going to examine the handles of two the top events in the horse racing calendar.
Kentucky Derby Handle
The Kentucky Derby is the jewel of the US horse racing schedule and based on the handle, interest in the event is continuing to rise. The 2024 Kentucky Derby day program attracted a record handle of $320.5m, which was up from $288.7m from the previous year.
Mystik Dan won the Kentucky Derby in front of 156,710 fans. The handle of that race was $210.7m, breaking the record sports betting revenue figures of $188.7m set in 2023.
Breeders Cup Handle
The Breeders Cup is a two-day festival of thoroughbred racing which attracts huge handles each year. Held at Santa Anita Park in 2023, the total all-sources, global common-pool handle for the two days of racing came to $176,281,989 including online operators. It was a little down on the record of $189,060,373, set in 2022 at Keeneland, but it was still a very large figure.
The races on Friday in 2023 generated $62,136,939, with the Saturday 12-race Breeders’ Cup card bringing in $114,145,050. In 2024, the Breeders Cup moves venues to the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club in California. When the event was last there in 2021, it enjoyed a total handle of $182,908,409.
What Does Handle Mean in Betting for Me?
The total handle figure for a sporting event is useful for the sportsbooks themselves and media reporting. When it comes to bettors, the useful information is when you drill into the numbers. On major events like those listed above, we’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue in sports betting.
There are percentage figures available for both how many bets placed on an outcome in a market and the percentage of money wagered. Weighing up those figures can be informative. If an outcome has received only 20% of the total number of bets, but 40% of the money wagered, you can assume that the heavy hitters are weighing in with some big stakes.
When you can see where the weight of the sharp money from people betting and their wagers are going, it presents the opportunity to fade the public, should you think that another outcome is more likely. The handle data is a very useful tool for bettors that are looking to invest their time in doing the sort of research that can result in long-term profits.