Updated Sep 7, 2026 · Week 1 board.
Where -148 comes from
The number sits on the Week 1 screen we keep across three books. Broncos at Chiefs, Monday Night Football, Sep 14. DraftKings has the Chiefs at -148 and the Broncos at +124. Pinnacle has the same game at -149 Chiefs and +131 Broncos. Bovada has it at -150 and +130. Three books, three slightly different opinions, one football game.
Turning -148 into a chance and a price
American odds turn into a chance with one of two formulas, and the sign picks which one. For a negative price like -148, take its size and divide by itself plus 100: 148 / (148 + 100) = 59.68%. For a positive price, take 100 and divide by the price plus 100. DraftKings' Broncos price of +124 gives 100 / (124 + 100) = 44.64%.
That same -148 becomes a decimal price with a second formula. Add 1 to 100 divided by the price's size, so 1 + 100/148 = 1.676. Bet a dollar at 1.676 and a winner returns $1.676 all in. That is the identical payout -148 describes in American form. Risk $148 to win $100 in profit, or risk $1 to win 68 cents, at the same ratio either way.
| Book | Chiefs price | Chiefs probability | Chiefs decimal | Broncos price | Broncos probability |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pinnacle | -149 | 59.84% | 1.671 | +131 | 43.29% |
| DraftKings | -148 | 59.68% | 1.676 | +124 | 44.64% |
| Bovada | -150 | 60.00% | 1.667 | +130 | 43.48% |
One price never adds to 100 percent
Now add DraftKings' two chances together. 59.68% on the Chiefs and 44.64% on the Broncos comes to 104.32%. Not 100%. That extra 4.32 belongs to the book, and it does not mean both teams are somehow likelier than a coin flip allows. Divide each side by that raw sum and the padding falls straight out. Kansas City's fair chance is 59.68 / 104.32 = 57.21%. Denver's is 44.64 / 104.32 = 42.79%. Those two add to exactly 100%, which is what makes them a pair worth trusting. A single quoted -148 is never that pair.
Back the Chiefs at -148 and you need a win rate above 59.68% just to break even at the stated price. The fair number underneath it is 57.21%. That is a 2.47-point gap, and 2.47 points is the actual price of reading one side of a market instead of both of them.
Run the same divide-by-the-sum step at the other two shops. Pinnacle's raw sum is 59.84 + 43.29 = 103.13%, a 3.13% cut, which leaves 58.02% Chiefs and 41.98% Broncos. Bovada's raw sum is 60.00 + 43.48 = 103.48%, a 3.48% cut, leaving 57.98% and 42.02%. Strip the cut and all three books land within a quarter point of each other, even though DraftKings carries the widest raw cut of the three at 4.32%. The prices look different. The opinions barely are.
What -148 is not
-148 is a market price. Our own Week 1 projections for this game are a separate number entirely, and none of them went into anything above. Nothing here has been settled either, because the game has not been played. This is arithmetic run once, on one pregame price, using the formulas printed above, and that is the whole extent of the claim.
The odds converter runs this same conversion on any price you type in. The live odds board carries all three books' current numbers for this game. Shopping the same side across books, the way the picks board tracks it, is a different question from what a single number like -148 means on its own, and a companion piece on moneyline strategy takes that one up.
The Receipts Drawer
2.47 points. That is the distance between what -148 claims on its own and what it claims once you have checked it against Denver's price. Small, real, and sitting underneath every single-side quote you will ever read. My honest flag is that nothing behind this number has been graded, so read it as arithmetic and not as a record. So watch the line into Monday night. If Kansas City goes past -150 anywhere, put the new pair through the same two steps and see what has happened to that 2.47.
