Sports Betting Stats Hub
Sports betting stats — May 2026
A monthly-refreshed cite-able snapshot of US sports betting data — model performance, closing-line value, parlay vig, ATS cover rates, sportsbook handle. Lift any line; deeplink any stat. Sources cited.
ATS + spreads
3 stats- # 47.4%
Home favorites covered the closing-line spread 47.4% of the time across 970 graded NFL games in our database.
- # 52.6%
Road underdogs covered 52.6% of NFL spreads in our sample — the symmetric counterpart to home favorites and a sanity check that the market is roughly efficient at the close.
- # 0.0 pts
Shark Snip stores nfl_schedules.spread_line as POSITIVE when the home team is favored — the opposite of the nflverse convention. Every ATS calculation uses cover = result - spread_line.
Totals
2 stats- # 49.1%
The over hit on 49.1% of NFL game totals in our database. A market that hits ~50% on the over is the textbook definition of an efficient pricing process.
- # 4.0%
Middles on NFL totals — betting both an under at one number and an over at a different number — pay roughly 14:1 when they cash, but cash less than 4% of the time at typical 1.5-point gaps.
Parlays
3 stats- # 12.0%
Same-game parlays applied a correlation discount of 5-15% off the multiplicative parlay price across the major books in 2024 — the discount IS the trap, since the implied vig grows with the number of legs.
- # 1.5%
Arbitrage opportunities between two retail sportsbooks rarely exceed 1-2% margin in major US markets — and book limits collapse fast once a bettor demonstrates a pattern of timing.
- # 12.7%
A standard 3-leg parlay at -110 prices carries roughly a 13% effective vig vs about 4.5% on a single side bet.
Source: Action Network — How sportsbook vig works · retrieved 2026-05-21
Closing line value
2 stats- # +2.0 pts
Sustained closing-line value above 2 cents per bet is the cleanest indicator a bettor has a real edge — most sharp groups operate in the 2-5 cent range across thousands of plays.
- # 50.0%
For a -110/-110 two-way market, the no-vig fair price for each side is exactly 50% — every dollar of vig the book takes is dead-weight cost for the bettor.
Model performance
5 stats- # 256
256 public Shark Snip models are open to inspection — every input, every output, every backtested grade.
- # 37
Shark Snip ships 37 model blocks — from logistic regression to gradient-boosted ensembles to TF.js neural nets — composable client-side without a server roundtrip.
- # 4
Per-player feature stores cover all four major US sports — NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL — with a unified schema and identical scoring presets.
- # 1
The Fly.io nflbets-training app performs a full daily retrain across every published model and dataset — idempotent, skipping any model whose dataset hashes have not changed.
- # 0
Tinker trains TensorFlow.js + ONNX-web models entirely client-side — no GPU server, no usage cap, no shared inference queue.
Industry handle
3 stats- # $148.3B
US commercial sportsbooks handled $148.3 billion in legal wagers in 2024, a 23.6% jump over 2023.
Source: American Gaming Association — Commercial Gaming Revenue Tracker · retrieved 2026-05-21
- # $13.8B
Sportsbook gross gaming revenue (hold) reached $13.78 billion in 2024 — a 25.4% YoY increase.
Source: American Gaming Association — Commercial Gaming Revenue Tracker · retrieved 2026-05-21
- # $23.1B
Bettors wagered an estimated $23.1 billion on Super Bowl LVIII across legal and informal markets.
Source: American Gaming Association Super Bowl survey · retrieved 2026-05-21
State of play
9 stats- # 12
Twelve free calculators — Kelly, no-vig, parlay EV, CLV, hedge, middle, arbitrage, EV, implied odds, odds converter, teaser, bonus conversion — ship under /desk/tools.
- # 4.5%
Standard -110/-110 sportsbook lines carry roughly 4.55% effective vig. A bettor needs to win 52.4% of those wagers just to break even.
- # 52.38%
At -110 prices, the bettor break-even win rate is exactly 11/21 = 52.38%. Anything below is a long-run loser; anything above is a long-run winner.
- # 50.0%
Half-Kelly bet sizing — staking 50% of the Kelly-optimal fraction — cuts drawdown variance roughly in half versus full Kelly while keeping ~75% of the geometric growth rate.
- # 38
38 US states plus Washington DC have legal sports betting as of May 2026, with 30 supporting online wagers.
Source: Legal Sports Report — US sportsbook map · retrieved 2026-05-21
- # 68,000,000
68 million American adults — about 26% of the adult population — placed a bet on Super Bowl LVIII in 2024.
Source: American Gaming Association Super Bowl survey · retrieved 2026-05-21
- # $3.4B
CFTC-regulated prediction markets (Kalshi + ForecastEx) hit $3.4B in election + event volume in 2024 H2, pulling regulatory attention to event contracts on sports outcomes.
Source: CFTC press release — KalshiEX position limits · retrieved 2026-05-21
- # 33.0%
NFL games drive roughly 33% of all US sportsbook handle, the largest single-league share of any sport.
Source: Legal Sports Report — NFL handle breakdown · retrieved 2026-05-21
Fantasy
2 stats- # 1
Fantasy projections refresh nightly, with weekly tier boards regenerated server-side and per-position K reassignable client-side in the browser.
- # 62,500,000
62.5 million Americans played fantasy sports in 2024 — about 1 in 5 adults — with 80% of them now in money leagues.
Source: Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association — 2024 industry report · retrieved 2026-05-21