Hold Calculator

What is Hold and Overround, and why do Sportsbooks have it?

Hold is a percentage that indicates how much money a sportsbook takes after all wagers are settled, and it is based on the total implied probability of every outcome in a market. In real life, the probability of any event will add up to 100%, however in order to make money on any given event, a sportsbook will set the odds so the probabilities add up to a percentage greater than 100%. The remaining percentage over 100%, or very rarely below if the sportsbook has made an error, is the hold percentage, often also referred to as the overround. This allows the sportsbook to take an expected profit on each event, which is known as vigorish, or vig.

A simple example of this are odds for the Spread, which are commonly set at -110 for each team. The real combined probabilities are equal to 100%, however -110 odds imply a probability of 52.38%, which adds up to 104.77%, and a 4.77% hold percentage.

Whilst this is relatively small for a binary market such as the spread, for futures markets such as the Superbowl winner, the hold percentage inflates quite dramatically, due to a much larger amount of variables that the Sportsbook has to consider. You can use our calculator above to see this in action.