Without knowing it, you´re correct. The line is set higher than the “true” line. Reason: Fans bet the favourites. A study in early 2000s showed that up to 90% of betting amounts go on the favo (most of this extreme cases are home favourites). So to gain even more profit than the approx 10% comission on winning bets (= 5% on total wagered money) if both sides get even action, they set the line that favos only cover approx 48%, thus the sportbooks are making 20% more profits. Problem is: If you (as bettor) bet the underdogs you still lose money, but not as much. So to win in the long run, a simple bet-the-underdog-strategy doesnt help. I spent hundreds of hours on historical betting line stats (NFL, last couple of years AFL) in addition to game statistics… but my record is still “only” about 51% (I am proud of it anyway. To beat the line in the long run, is hard, very hard)*. But without the various bonuses from sportsbooks, I would be in the minus. And it´s attacking your heart. Just had a 8 game losing streak on NHL games (3 losses came on OT/penalties, none of this OT games worked in favour of my dogs), so I did some more work. To my surprise: The bet-the-underdog-strategy doesnt work with the NHL, meaning losing less money than the average bettor (and I wonder how long it still will in the NFL, once the simple bettors find out the “secret” of betting the dogs)…

Oh, and btw: Yes the bookies are awesome in setting the lines. But they also get a lot of help from computer programmers with their algorithms.

* You need to win approx 52.5% of your bets to break even. If you get lucky, and think you´re brilliant when winning 60% of the first 50 games, the hammer will hit you back to reality on the first long losing streak (had some that went 14 games, because I bet moneylines only)…

P.S.: I dont care about the fix anymore. Its a 50/50 to be on the wrong side of a fix. It evens out on the long run. No need to watch the games. Hockey is pretty boring… But I watch AFL. But never bet “my” Swans, that would spoil the party.

Subtle point about to be made here:

From what I read about this stuff, and from listening to ESPN’s “Behind the Bets” religiously for the past 4 or so years (so I’m not an expert, but somewhat in the loop), the feeling I get is that they *do* want to make more than just what they get off the action. The reason they shift the line around to even out the bets is to mitigate their losses, which is not quite the same thing as just setting the line so they get equal action.

Here’s what I mean: Vegas will set a line and a flood of money will come in on one side. OK, so they move the line to attract more money on the other side. BUT, they have about as good an idea as anyone (some studies have shown that they indeed have the BEST idea) of what the “real” spread should be, so they don’t drastically move the line…they move it enough so that, in their estimation, they won’t get killed if the majority is right. They don’t just start moving the line until the action is equal.

And Vegas isn’t always right…in a lot of cases they *should* have moved a line more and didn’t. I think the Browns is a good example of that this year…the Browns just could not cover a spread, but you didn’t see Vegas hiking the spreads on the Browns that much. Cleveland didn’t have a bad team, it sure looked to me like they were good enough to cover some of these spreads, but they didn’t.

Finally, if you listen to the above-mentioned podcast, you’ll hear the bookmaker say things like “Man, we REALLY needed the Raiders this weekend” or “Yeah, we knew we could push the line up a bit because the public loves betting on the Packers”, etc.

So yes, I believe “equal action” is certainly in their minds, and yep, they make money when the action is equal. But I do believe they’re *trying* to make more than that. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have things like the “80/20” rule, which says “If 80% of the money is one side, bet the other side”. While this doesn’t always work out, it highlights the fact that indeed the action *can be* unequal on a game and Vegas doesn’t do anything about it. They ride it out and hope that they’re right (they usually are).