USA Legal Online Football Betting Guide For 2024
Football isn’t exactly a foreign topic to Americans, especially Americans who love to gamble on sports. However, since 2006 when the USA went a little haywire with their anti-gambling laws, many American gamblers have been really confused about what’s legal, what isn’t, and how they can go about legally betting on football via the Internet.
Hopefully we will be able to clear some of this up for you here at Bet On Sports USA. Not that the topic is complex or anything; exactly to the contrary, in fact. This stuff is very simplistic to understand; it’s just that most resources are busy trying to push advertising on you and so their “explanations” of the topic, if you can call them that, get very muddied by pointless promotional prose and redundant rhetoric.
We’re going to cut the distance with the straightest line possible here, giving you the information you need to know in a straightforward manner so that you can simply do what you enjoy by betting on football.
The National Football League might wear the crown and sit in the golden throne when it comes to football, but they’re far from the only players on the block. The NCAA men’s D1 college football market is also gigantic, and it’s become even larger thanks to the College Football Playoff rendering the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) all but extinct.
So, follow along as we give you the information you need to know regarding legal football betting in the United States.
Most Trusted US Friendly Online Sportsbooks Offering Football Betting Odds In 2024
| Site Name | Bonus Offer | Rating Out Of 100 | USA Friendly? | Visit Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bovada Sportsbook | 50% Max $1,000 | 98% | Yes | Visit Site |
| Bookmaker | 100% Max $500 | 94% | Yes | Visit Site |
| Betonline Sportsbook | 50% Max $1,000 | 91% | Yes | Visit Site |
| Sportsbetting.ag | 50% Max $1,000 | 88% | Yes | Visit Site |
The Legality Betting On Football In The United States
There are a dozen different ways we could explain this, and we could realistically write an entire series of novels on the laws, rules and regulations of gambling in America on both the state and federal level. Suffice to say, however, that it’s perfectly legal for you to gamble on sports in the United States of America.
Why is this the case, if gambling is supposedly illegal? It’s because the only form of gambling that’s considered illegal is the business of gambling. In other words, if you wanted to operate your own sportsbook and offer people the option of betting on football, you would be in violation of all sorts of laws on both the state and federal levels.
However, if you simply want to gamble, then you’re looking at the same laws applying as apply to you as if if you wanted to go and purchase a lottery ticket. As long as the location is allowing you to gamble, and as long as the location is operating legally, you can gamble there legally without any legal recourse.
We couldn’t say with 100% certainty why this is; we just know it has nothing to do with your freedoms. The government doesn’t care about your freedoms, as evidenced all throughout history and the thousands of new laws to pop up every year. What’s likely the case is that the government doesn’t want to create a snowball effect that would kill the lotto industry and cities like Las Vegas and AC by making the act of gambling itself illegal.
So, as it stands, the act of gambling is perfectly legal, while it’s just the business of gambling that’s illegal in most states.
Finding the Right Site for Football Betting
So, with gambling being legal for you as a private citizen, the dilemma becomes finding the right site with which to bet. This can be cleared up very quickly by finding a good offshore site. In short, an offshore site is a website that’s operating outside of the United States, so they’re in no way, shape or form subject to the laws and regulations of America.
And despite how much America may hate it that these sites are opening up in other nations and offering Americans the chance to gamble online, there’s just nothing whatsoever that America can actually do about it. They have no jurisdiction at all over these sites, and so these sites can invite as many Americans into the fold as they so choose.
You have to understand, however, that the overwhelming majority of sportsbooks and other betting sites catering to Americans in 2016 are offshore sites. So the issue then becomes one of finding the best possible site for your monetary investment.
You’re going to want a site that’s safe and secure, but also a site that has good payment options, quality customer support, plenty of betting lines and options like prop bets and live bets, and other key criteria.
Rather than having to go around and test these sites for yourself, you can instead check out our recommendations for the best sportsbooks on which you can find betting lines for American football.
Betting on the NFL
The most popular type of football bet you’re going to find is an NFL bet. With 32 teams in two conferences playing a 16-game regular season schedule, plus the preseason and playoffs, you’re looking at hundreds of different games on which you can bet, and thousands of different lines.
One of the most popular lines, especially before the season really gets underway, is a future line. For instance, you can find a bet that gives you 11/1 odds on the Green Bay Packers winning the Super Bowl. This means that betting $1 will net you $11 if you win. So a bet of a few bucks can go a long way.
You can also find these futures that don’t require a team to win the actual Super Bowl. For instance, you can find futures for teams to make the playoffs, win their division, win a single playoff game, etc.
Then you get to the types of lines that most everyone knows about, like the point spreads. This is a line that’s very simple to understand in the context of American football. Say you have the Patriots playing the Broncos, with the Pats at home, and the line reads Patriots -14, Broncos +14.
This simply means that the Pats are favored by 14 points, or two touchdowns, and that you’re going to make your pick based on which outcome you think is more probable: The Patriots winning by 15 or more points, or the Broncos coming within 13 (14 is the baseline, the push). Another popular line is the over-under. This is basically a prediction on what the final score is going to be.
For instance, you may see a line, like with the Pats-Broncos game, that has the O/U set at 44. This means the baseline prediction is 44 points accumulated by both teams. When you bet here, you’re predicting whether you think the game will go over 45 total points, or under 43 total points. Pretty simple stuff to understand, but please do your research and bet responsibly. It’s a whole lot easier to lose than to win.
If you want a good resource to view team schedules, player stats, game results or news, then NFL.com is naturally the site we recommend.
Betting on the NCAAF
When you bet on the NCAA, you’re looking at the same basic types of bets that you’ll find with the NFL. One type of bet we want to touch on here, however, is the straight bet. Yes, this is a type of bet that’s available with the NFL, but it’s used a lot more when betting on the NCAA because some teams are power-houses when it comes to winning games, but the manner in which they win (total score) is up in the air.
Ohio State, for instance, does tremendously on the straight win card, netting people some cash. Though when it comes to point spreads and O/U bets, they sometimes only win by a few points in low-scoring games, while the next game will be a blowout with an epic score. So, for collegiate football, a straight bet is a type of line you may want to consider.
No matter which betting types you’re considering, or which teams you’re considering betting on, you need to really put in your due diligence to ensure that you’re giving yourself the best opportunity to win. You cannot expect to simply luck into winning. Look into the teams, check out some betting tips and tricks, and bet responsibly.