By Only Players Staff
Updated 3/27/24 3:08am ET
In sports betting coverage and conversations, you often hear the word “handle” to describe betting action.
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Sports betting is complicated and it can be intimidating as a new bettor. We’re here to help.
Mariah
Get out your notepads and your pencils. It is time for betology, your favorite class of the day. It’s betting terminology broken down by Doug. Now, when discussing betting, you may hear the term handle thrown around, but what does it truly mean? It’s not a door knock.
Doug
No, it is not, it is not. It is basically just another term. So there’s no technicalities here. Kind of understand nuance, it represents the total money bet. So a lot of times behind the counter, you have different sort of positions and things that are affected by one outcome of one game will impact a thing. So it’s nice to just separate and categorize. So the handle is just the total money bet. So you’ll hear the total like Super Bowl is something you hear often, like the handle of the Super Bowl this year, was a record or a second highest ever.
It’s just the total amount of money bet on the game is the handle. Sometimes you’ll hear it in sort of like, in a micro way, like the handle on the side was X, like on the point spread, meaning side, meaning either the favorite or the underdog, then you’ll hear the handle. So they’ve already broken it off. But if you just hear handle, it’s total money bet on the game. So that’s the money line, the over-under, and the point spread both sides. So it’s just a way to, you know in terms of gauge interest. And a lot of times the handle will be correlated with total overall interest for like a game on TV. So if you have a bunch of games on NFL on a Sunday, the marquee game in that second window or the Sunday night game, the handle of those games is going to outweigh any other game because they’re on TV. Uh, Sunday night football has the largest handle of any game on an NFL weekend, just because it’s on an Island or on a TV isolated game.
But that’s all it is, it’s just another term and it’s an abbreviation if you will or shortened way of saying total amount of money bet is the handle.
Mariah
And to clarify, handle isn’t like the number of bet slips.
Doug
Correct.
Mariah
It’s the sum of the money from those bet slips.
Doug
Total dollars bet, correct. Yeah, well put, it’s the total dollars bet and it’s not how much they make. They look at the total handle and they try to have a whole percentage or something like that, but yeah, handle is just total money bet. Now you rarely get that figure from an oddsmaker for the Super Bowl, Nevada gaming will report the state’s findings and their report, but they won’t break it down for casino, for sportsbook. But you’ll hear oddsmakers talk about, yeah, our handle was higher this year, maybe March Madness, our handle was higher this year than any other year, things like that. They’ll give it to you in abstract or vague ways, but not in specific dollars. That’s just something they don’t disclose, their exact dollars.
Mariah
You’re not getting the exact number for your handle, but you’ll know if it’s large or small. Hopefully that clarifies things.
