A futures bet is a bet on an outcome settled at the end of a season or tournament, not in one game: who wins the Super Bowl, who is named MVP, how many games a team wins. You place it now and wait weeks or months for the result, and the price you take is locked in on the day you bet.
This guide covers the types of futures bets, how to read the odds, how to hedge one, and what to check before you place one.
Types of futures bets
- Championship winners: the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup, the World Series, the Champions League.
- Conference and division winners: the AFC or NFC, or a division such as the NFC North.
- Player awards: MVP, Offensive and Defensive Player of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Coach of the Year.
- Season win totals: over or under a number of regular-season wins.
- Season-long player stats: a player’s total yards, points, goals or home runs over the year.
Every futures market is open before the season and most stay open during it, with the prices moving as results come in.
How to read futures odds
Futures are almost always quoted as plus prices. A +500 price pays $500 profit on a $100 bet, so you get $600 back in all. To turn a price into the chance it implies:
- Plus price: 100 / (price + 100). +500 is 100 / 600, or 16.7%.
- Minus price: price / (price + 100), using the number without its sign. -200 is 200 / 300, or 66.7%.
Here is what that looks like on a real board. For the 2026 NFL season, DraftKings, through ESPN, prices the Super Bowl as follows (read September 25, 2026):
| Team | Price | Implied chance |
|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles Rams | +620 | 13.9% |
| Buffalo Bills | +750 | 11.8% |
| Baltimore Ravens | +950 | 9.5% |
| Seattle Seahawks | +1000 | 9.1% |
| San Francisco 49ers | +1050 | 8.7% |
| Kansas City Chiefs | +1100 | 8.3% |
Add the implied chances of all 32 teams and they come to 122.8%. The 22.8 points above 100 is the book’s margin, which is far bigger than the 4.8 points built into a single game priced at -110 on both sides. That is the main cost of futures: you pay more margin, and your money is tied up until the market settles.
A futures bet is worth making only when you rate the chance higher than the price does. If you think Buffalo wins the Super Bowl one time in six, that is 16.7%, and +750 at 11.8% is a price worth taking. If you think it is one in ten, it is not.
Compare prices across books
Futures prices vary more between books than single-game lines do, because less money is bet on them. The gap compounds: on a $100 bet, +750 pays $750 and +900 pays $900, and the implied chance drops from 11.8% to 10.0%. Check at least three books before a futures bet, and our sportsbook reviews show which books are available where you are.
How to hedge a futures bet
Hedging means betting against your own futures ticket late in the season to lock in a profit whatever happens.
Say you bet $100 on a team at +500 before the season, and it reaches the final. The opponent is now +150 to win it. Bet $240 on the opponent:
- Your team wins: $500 from the futures bet, minus the $240 hedge, is $260 profit.
- The opponent wins: $360 from the hedge, minus the $100 futures stake, is $260 profit.
You give up the chance of a $500 profit in return for a sure $260. Whether that is worth it depends on how much the $500 would matter to you, and on the price you can get for the hedge: at a worse price than +150 the locked-in profit is smaller.
Can you parlay futures bets?
Some books allow futures parlays, and a parlay pays the product of the legs in decimal odds. Two legs at +300 (4.0 in decimal) and +400 (5.0) make 4.0 x 5.0 = 20.0, which is +1900. Both legs have to win, and each carries its own margin, so the book’s edge on the parlay is larger than on either leg. Two outcomes that depend on each other, such as a team to win its conference and the Super Bowl, are more likely together than the product of their prices says, which is why a book may refuse that parlay.
Futures and props: the difference
A prop is a bet on something inside one game, such as a player’s passing yards on Sunday, and it settles that day. A futures bet settles at the end of a season or an event. Season-long player stats sit between the two: they are props on a player’s numbers, but they settle like futures.
What to check before a futures bet
Start with last season, then adjust for what has changed: the coach, the quarterback, the roster moves and the schedule. A team with a new starting quarterback is priced partly on hope, and that is where prices are most often wrong in both directions.
Injuries move futures prices faster than results do. When a starting quarterback goes down for six weeks, the price moves the day the news breaks, not the day the losses show up in the standings, so a bet placed after the news is placed at the new price.
Watch the board, not the headlines. A price that shortens from +1200 to +800 in two weeks means money has come in on that team, and the value you saw at +1200 is gone.
Size futures bets small. Your stake sits with the book for months, so a futures bet should be a unit or less of your bankroll, and the whole futures book a small share of it.
Where futures are most popular
The NFL has the deepest futures board: for the 2026 season, ESPN lists DraftKings markets for the Super Bowl, both conferences, all eight divisions, the most regular-season wins and seven awards from MVP to Coach of the Year. The NBA, NHL and MLB have the same shape, with championship, conference, division and award markets. Golf and tennis futures are on each major, and soccer futures on the leagues and the Champions League.
Our game-by-game reads are on the NFL predictions hub, and live odds from several books are on the Scores and Stats home page.