Best Parlay Betting Sites

1. Online Parlay Betting
2. Best Parlay Betting Sites Against

When betting sites offer fixed parlay odds on point spreads generally the more teams you bet the worse the odds become. If you were to roll all bets forward 8-times, staking your full return each time, you’d get paid 175.45 to 1 and notice BetOnline only pays 165 to 1 on 8-team parlays.

A parlay is a wager on multiple games all placed into a single bet. In theory the payout for a 2-team parlay is the same as if you bet one game, collected your winnings plus stake, and then bet the winnings plus stake on a second game. A three 3-team parlay in theory pays the same as if you repeated this process of rolling forward an additional time and a 4-team if you repeated it yet another time… so on and so forth. Some online betting sites allow players to bet up to 25-teams in the same parlay, while most allow a lesser amount such as 10-team max or 8-team max. Now I stated “in theory” because when it comes to football parlays the payouts are often less.

What’s important to note for football betting is many online sportsbooks short-pay point spread selections when adding them to a parlay. In their defense, they get away with this because built deep into their betting rules are terms such as “fixed parlay odds” for football point spreads. Although this might seem unethical, bettors always see the payouts prior to confirming their bet. So, this is more a matter of betting sites taking advantage of recreational bettors who don’t know any better, than it is cheating.

Beware of Fixed Odds Parlays

Finding the best online sports betting site can be challenging. As legal sports betting options become more prevalent, both dedicated bettors and everyday sports fans are looking for the best online sportsbooks and betting apps. We’ve reviewed 228 online betting sites and spent hundreds of hours identifying the top sites for betting on sports. Introducing same game parlays! Now, you can combine multiple bets from one matchup or team into a single parlay to go for an even bigger win. Think your favorite team is going to dominate their next matchup? Bet on them to win, the total to go over, and their QB to throw over 3 TDs — all in one parlay. Parlay challenges give players a chance to earn up to 20% more than they normally would on regular parlay bets. We build your parlay card for you to save you time and get you betting faster. Weekly football parlay challenges will be posted every Tuesday.

The image to the right shows the fixed parlay odds for football point spreads offered by popular US betting site BetOnline (review). Now to make sure we’re clear you can wager any number of selections as you’d like in the same football parlay. If each selection wins you’ll get the payouts shown to the left. If any one or more selections lose your entire stake is a lost. Now let me take some time to show what the payout would be if you wagered these individually and then rolled your profit forward each time.

You start with a $100 bet and wager it at -110, this is $100 to win $90.91 so if it wins you end up with $190.91. You then wager that all on the next game at -110, and this is $190.91 to win $173.55 so if it wins you now have $364.46. $100 was your stake, so your profit is $264.46. At BetOnline $100 pays $260. I calculated this by noticing their odds are listed as 13/5 and $100 has 20 parts of 5 so 5*13=$260. As you can see by offering “fixed odds” BetOnline is able to short the payout by $4.64. I’ll save showing the work behind the math, but if you were to keep rolling your $100 initial stake plus winnings forward 6 consecutive times without a loss you’d end up with $4841.27, of which $100 was your stake, and $4741.27 profit. Notice BetOnline only offers 45 to 1 on a 6-team parlay, when the actual odds are over 47.4 to 1. If you think this is small, it’s not; it adds up in a hurry.

When betting sites offer fixed parlay odds on point spreads generally the more teams you bet the worse the odds become. If you were to roll all bets forward 8-times, staking your full return each time, you’d get paid 175.45 to 1 and notice BetOnline only pays 165 to 1 on 8-team parlays. I cover some of this math in my article on football teasers in case you’re interested in how it is calculated, but for now let me state at BetOnline 6-team fixed odds parlays for football give you odds of -111.92 per team and BetOnline 8-team fixed odds parlays for football give you odds of -111.67 per team. For BetOnline parlays it’s fairly consistent and just a matter of rounding. However at sites such as Sportsbook.com and BetUs.com the payouts are even worse on higher number of teams.

How to Get Around Fixed Odds Parlays

There’s a trick you should know about. In Las Vegas, and with many online sportsbooks, fixed odds only apply to point spreads priced -110. If you were to add an alternative selection you can force the sportsbook to give you the true odds. For example an 8 team point spread parlay at BetOnline where 7 teams are -110 and one team is -115 you’ll end up with a payout of 171.8 to 1 instead of the 165 to 1 they offer if all teams were -110. You’re also more likely to win because teams priced -115 win more often than teams priced -110. The golden rule is to never select only teams priced -110 at betting sites that use fixed odds for football parlays.

Another option for parlay bettors is to just turn to sites which don’t short the payouts. Sites I know of that use true odds as opposed to fixed odds include www.bovada.lv and www.bookmaker.eu. Of course there’s another challenge parlays present. The best way to beat sports betting is to line shop for the best price. Forcing yourself to only bet in parlays, instead of straight point spread bets, limits you to using just a single betting site. Truth be told, more times than not parlays are an enemy of football bettors than they are a blessing. There are however times betting parlays does make sense.

Correlated Parlays Are Great

If a betting site allowed you to parlay yes or no for two propositions listed as “will it be rainy today?” and “willing it be cloudy today?” obviously you’d have a huge edge betting parlays instead of straight wagers. Unfortunately online betting sites block parlays for anything too heavily correlated. For example, a college football line from late last season was LSU –49 / NWST +49 with an over/under of 56. Obviously the betting sites did not allow parlays on this game because the results were too heavily correlated. However, there are times where correlations that do make sense are allowed. I recall the opening round of the January 2012 NFL playoffs had a very injured Pittsburgh Steelers team visiting the struggling offense and strong defense of the Denver Broncos. The line was Broncos +7.5 and over/under 33.5. The betting sites did allow me to parlay Denver and the under, which in my opinion was correlated for the reason I thought if Denver did cover the point spread it would most likely be by a low total. This wager didn’t work out as the game turned into a shoot out (go figure eh?) but I’m sure you see the point that betting parlays when there is a correlation does make sense.

Using Parlays for Bonuses

Bookmaker.eu offers a decent free play sign up bonus and then also offers 20% reload bonuses for deposits made on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. These bonuses are issued as free play credits, and it makes great sense to always use these on parlays. The reason is when you bet say $100 cash at +$100 and win you get back $200 (your stake + win). When you bet using free plays you only get back $100. This is because your $100 staked was a free play; it’s now used up and all you get is your return because win or lose that free play is gone. When you instead use Bookmaker free plays as parlays you’re getting to recycle this stake multiple times.

Circumventing Betting Limits

The final good use for parlays is to circumvent betting limits. For example, if you’re wagering with www.bovada.lv and they have a $1000 max bet on a football point spreads (the same they often do) but this bet has such large expected value you want to get a lot of action down on it. You could then bet more by adding this selection to various 2-team parlays. Perhaps you make one bet straight, and also make a $1000 parlay on the moneyline of the largest favorite on the board plus this team.

Final Thoughts

Parlays are mostly lottery type gambles for recreational bettors, but when used on correlated outcomes, or to increase free play value, or to circumvent betting limits they can be smart plays. In most all other cases you’re far better off betting straight using a football betting system over adding the selection to the parlay. However, if you’re just looking to gamble, be reminded to avoid fixed odds by either adding a team priced something other than -110 to your betting ticket, or by using betting websites with favorable parlay odds. Popular US friendly betting site www.bovada.lv is a great choice for casual gamblers looking to wager football parlays.

Editor’s note: This article provided a decent introduction on “what is a parlay bet” and some basic strategy. If you’re interested in taking your game to the next level, read our page on football betting strategy where many articles to advanced topics are linked.

Parlay Sportsbooks

In our minds, these are the best sportsbooks for betting parlays for a variety of reasons. A lot of times, the best US sportsbooks overall are going to be the best in a lot of areas.

Top Parlay Betting Sites

PointsBet

PointsBet Sportsbook doesn’t have as many options to parlay in some instances, but is one that regularly offers Parlay Insurance. If you win all but one leg of a parlay ticket, you can claim a refund, generally up to either $25 or $50 depending on the promotion running at that time. There is nothing worse with a parlay than winning four out of five and having nothing to show for it.

Online Parlay Betting

Fortunately, if you bet at a sportsbook with Parlay Insurance like that, you can cut your losses a little bit by either getting a full refund or a partial refund, depending on the amount of the initial bet.

BetMGM

BetMGM is one of the oldest US operators. Like we’ll talk about with William Hill, this is a sportsbook that has seen a lot of parlays in its time. Because MGM as a company has so many different resources and ways of making money, they offer some of the fairest odds in the industry. The odds still matter in the calculation of a payout from a parlay, so you still want to get the best price on the game no matter what.

BetMGM offers the Single Game Parlay and also has the Bet Builder function right on the main page of the sportsbook so that you can construct a parlay and see in real-time what the payout odds would be for that Bet Slip.

BetRivers

BetRivers and DraftKings have very similar parlay options, though one really special feature is the Jackpot Parlay at BetRivers. These are bet types with long odds because eight randomly selected bet options are sent to you. Typically you’d want to bet a parlay where you like a lot of the things on it, but, the Jackpot Parlay adds a little more gamble and you can bet small to win big, so as long as you do it responsibly and don’t overdo it, this is a cool option at BetRivers that other sportsbooks do not offer.

As always, no matter where you bet, do it responsibly. Parlays seem fun and like a great opportunity to make a lot of money, but they are extremely challenging to consistently win and even to occasionally win, depending on how many bets are on it.

DraftKings

DraftKings Sportsbook is another sportsbook that offers Parlay Insurance and has a lot of different props and odds to parlay together. Their insurance policy isn’t as strong as somewhere like PointsBet, but the catalog of betting options is likely going to be a lot bigger. That’s really the difference between the two.

PointsBet’s ongoing weekly promotions seem to be stronger in the parlay department, but you really can’t go wrong with DraftKings either.

William Hill

Parlays are big business across the pond in Europe. They were less of a thing when betting in the United States was restricted to Nevada, but they’ve really become the preferred bet type in the US. William Hill started in 1934 in London and operated in the UK and other parts of the world long before the US Supreme Court overturned PASPA. In other words, William Hill has been an industry leader in the parlay betting department for longer than the US operators have been in existence.

William Hill has fair pricing on odds and that carries over to very fair pricing on parlays as well.

FanDuel

FanDuel Sportsbook is one of the best parlay sportsbooks because it is one where you can parlay basically anything you want. FanDuel was one of the first to highlight the big player props parlays that you’ve certainly heard about and have seen reported in the mainstream media. A lot of different things across multiple sports can be parlayed, so you can put together a diverse Bet Slip with all of your thoughts and limit your risk by betting a little to win a lot.

FanDuel also offers the Same Game Parlay option that really can be used to your advantage if applied properly and also offers Parlay Insurance and Cash Out options. This is a sportsbook that writes a ton of parlay action and is also the most popular in the country by market share, so you will be betting with a lot of other people that have found out why FanDuel is the best parlay sportsbook.

Parlay Betting Sites & Sportsbook Information:

As bettors from across the country wade into the sports betting waters, parlays seem to be an extremely popular wagering method. By definition, a parlay is any Bet Slip (sometimes called a “Ticket”) with at least two bets that are grouped together. Both bets need to win in order for the parlay ticket to be cashed.

Let’s say you like three bets. With “straight” wagering, if you win two and lose one, you get paid for your two winning bets. With parlay wagering, all three bets are together on the same ticket and all three have to win, otherwise you lose the entire ticket.

A lot of people like to bet parlays because you can bet a little to win a lot. Staring down three bets at -110 is a lot different than staring down one bet at +600. The reason why parlays pay better than regular wagers is because they are a lot more difficult to win. Winning one bet might not be that hard. Winning all three bets to cash a parlay ticket is a lot more difficult.

Parlays have been around forever, but they’ve taken on a much different meaning in the era of legalized sports betting in the United States. Most sportsbooks allow you to parlay everything under the sun. You can parlay the spread and total from the same game. You can parlay a bunch of props. Some sportsbooks even let you parlay futures together, so like a “Tampa Bay Title” future with the Buccaneers, Lightning, and Rays all on the same ticket.

The more items you add to a parlay, the more difficult it is to win, however, the bigger the “Odds” become. That is why you will see some crazy parlays with odds of +10000 or +50000. Sportsbooks are willing to offer these outlandish payout amounts because you have a small chance of winning that bet.

For example, at +10000 odds, you need to win one out of every 100 to essentially break even. It sounds easy, right? Think of how many +10000 parlays the sportsbooks see on a daily basis and how many of them lose. That is why you are offered such big odds and why so many people like to bet them. It’s a lot like scratching off a lottery ticket, except you have control of the numbers that you need to match in order to win.

Not all lottery tickets are low-risk, high-return ventures. Things called “Correlated Parlays” are now available to users because sportsbooks are allowing customers to bet “Same Game Parlays”. For example, take a college basketball game with a total of 120 and a spread of +12. That game has a low-scoring expectation, so if you think it will be low-scoring, getting 12 points on the underdog is probably a good bet.

You can parlay under 120 with +12 because you believe that there is a correlation between the two. A low-scoring game and a team getting a lot of points.

Or take the NFL, where you might see a total of 55 and a line of -3. If you think that will be a high-scoring game and think the favorite will do most of the scoring or is the better offensive team, you could invest in a correlation between the favorite and the over.

A lot of sportsbooks used to prevent correlated parlays because the right kind of calculation can give bettors the edge. With these new-school sportsbooks that are just looking to write any kind of action that they can, correlated parlays are back to being an option.

Parlays offer up a lot of opportunities on each side of the counter. Sportsbooks love writing parlay tickets because the vast majority of them are losers. A bettor might have a five-game parlay and go 4-1 and have nothing to show for it. Had those been straight wagers, 4-1 would have meant losing money from a sportsbook standpoint.

Bettors like them, especially those with smaller bankrolls, because you can bet a little to win a lot. Some people really do look at sports betting as a form of gambling in that way, so they can take their chances to bet small and win big. But, bettors can also use them as a weapon if they believe a certain number of events will happen.

Like a lot of bettors like to use money line parlays to put together big favorites in college football or UFC or another sport because it seems like a better use of resources to bet $10 to win $50 on a bunch of big favorites and maybe one underdog than to bet $10 and win $3 on each of the big favorites.

Parlay strategies are up for a lot of debate. Many people will say not to play parlays at all. Parlays are inherently a losing proposition because the odds given to win a parlay (the payout) are not the true odds. The actual likelihood of what you have bet occurring is not the same as the payout. In most cases, far from it. But, like everything else, there can be a time and place and a method to the madness.

Best Parlay Betting Sites Against

We won’t sit here and preach to you about the time, but we will tell you about the place. Well, places, in this case. Some sportsbooks are a better bet for parlays than others. Parlay Insurance is a popular perk or promotion offered by different sportsbooks. Others allow you to parlay more things together, like player props or the Same Game Parlay options. A lot of sportsbooks also offer Cash Out options now where you can decide to just take your winnings to that point instead of risking what you’ve already won.

If you are going to bet these long shots, at least do so at the best parlay sportsbooks so that you can limit the additional risk as much as possible.