How to Bet on Losing Teams

By Hank Blaine • April 28, 2023

It’s tough to bet on losing teams. Because we’re human, we all have a bit of Trump in us. The Donald used to say, “I like to bet on winners.” If we’re honest with ourselves, we also like to bet on winners. But doing so doesn’t always lead to profit. In fact, depending on your definition of losing and winning, betting on teams that win could lead to lost profit. Check out our step-by-step guide to betting on losing teams.

Profit By Betting on Losing Teams

Determine if the team is a loser against the spread, a loser on the money line, or a loser on both

Teams that lose against the spread and money line are usually bad bets. You can find a winning game among an SU and ATS loser, but it doesn’t happen often enough for you to make long term profit betting on the team.

We want teams that have no worse than a .400 record against the spread, or no worse than a .400 record on the money line.

A lot of times straight up winning teams are bad against the spread bets. The more a team wins straight up, the more oddsmakers adjust spread lines in favor of underdogs.

Remember, human beings like to bet on winners. So to attract action on the other side of the line, oddsmakers turn favored teams into underlays with ridiculous spreads.

Once we find the team, we can move to step 2.

Discover why the team loses

.400 teams aren’t the same as a .300 team. A .300 team is likely just a bad team. But a .400 team often has a losing record due to some anomaly, like an injured offensive lineman, or like in Milwaukee’s case versus Miami in this year’s NBA Playoffs, their best player not being one-hundred percent.

Try to find out why the team loses. Once you believe you’ve discovered why, move to step 3.

Is the reason your team loses, part of today’s game

Find out if the reason the team loses is present in the game you’re handicapping. Is the offensive lineman healthy enough to play? Did the team fire the losing coach?

If the reason your team loses is because of the head coach, and the squad has a new coach for the game you’re handicapping, that could be a positive.

For sure, change isn’t always good. Most of the time, though, positive change leads to positive outcomes.

Think about the odds, stats, and trends in today’s game

Once we’ve gone through the first three steps, we must turn our attention to traditional handicapping methods.

The first is to determine if the losing team offers fair, underlay, or overlay odds. If the team offers underlay odds, don’t bet on the team. We always want to bet on teams, no matter if they’re a losing or winning team, that offer fair or overlay odds.

Will the losing team you like lose today?

Losing teams don’t always lose, just like winning team don’t always win. The bottom line to making winning bets on losing teams is identifying when they are about to win.

By win, we mean win against the spread or on the money line. Money line bets on losing teams can be particularly profitable because odds are almost always above even money.

Losing teams are almost always a good play against winning teams, offering underlay odds. The 2007 New England Patriots went undefeated on the money line during the regular season and went 10-9 against the spread. However, the 10-9 spread record doesn’t tell the whole story. The Pats went 8-0 ATS in their first 8 games and 2-9 ATS in their final 11 games, counting the playoffs and Super Bowl, which tells us oddsmakers quickly adjusted lines on Patriot games. The teams the Patriots beat were ATS winners in almost every game after NFL Week 8.