An NFL season always provides plenty of thrills and spills across the USA as the teams fight it out for the ultimate glory of winning the Super Bowl. Both American Football and Canadian Football have their origins from the quintessentially British sport of rugby,
Now such is the appeal of American Football, that fixtures from the NFL are sometimes played in other countries, including England. NFL betting is one of the most heavily-backed sports in North America, due to the sheer popularity of the league.
An NFL season starts in the autumn each year, following the NFL draft. The start of a new campaign is booked for the first weekend after Labour Day. The season generally runs through to its completion in either late December or early January the following year.
The NFL has two Conferences, the AFC and the NFC and within each of those, there are four divisions. The aim of the game is to do enough to qualify from the conferences to make it through the playoff bracket.
There’s an NFC and an AFC side to the NFL playoff bracket. The winner of each section goes through to meet for the championship match that is the Super Bowl. Some popular futures for NFL betting include Super Bowl Winner, Division Winner and Conference Winner.
There is a lot that goes into an NFL season from the NFL draft to the regular season and postseason. It means that there are a lot of matches to cast a football betting eye over. The simple approach to NFL betting is taking a look at the Money Line, picking the winner of the match, or grouping several into a popular parlay format bet.
Teams play the bulk of their regular-season fixtures against teams from their own division, their conference and on a more limited basis, opposition from the other conference. Match betting NFL odds are hugely popular and with more and more midweek games accompanying the big traditional Sunday for the sport, the season brings a big burst of betting action.
As there are a lot of breaks in NFL matches, it means that live betting really comes into play extremely well. Spread betting is a common way to approach NFL betting. A fictional handicap line is created by the bookmaker. An example would be a favourite at -8.5, meaning that if they were backed with that spread bet you would need them to win the football match by a margin of at least 9 points.
As with most sports, the NFL is quite heavily statistic-driven. There are stats for everything, which for a punter can be a good thing because studying them can help influence your betting strategy. It can help to make an over/under prop bet on how many yards an individual player may complete in a match.
Prop bets in NFL odds are a wildly exciting part of NFL betting because they aren’t just about what happens on the field of play in a match. NFL prop bets can cover more novelty things like who will win the coin toss, or who will sing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl that season.
Total bets are another feature of football betting. An example is just considering First Half Points, Second Half points or the tally of points overall in the match. Those take out the condition of picking a match-winner and put everything on the match points.
The NFL championship match that is the Super Bowl is scheduled for the first Sunday in February. It has been that way since 2004.
This is an All Star match in the NFL where players selected from any team in the AFC go up against the top players from the NFC. The Pro Bowl has different rules to regular NFL matches, designed to make it safer as it’s just an exhibition match.
The Green Bay Packers were the first team to win the Super Bowl in 1967. They also claimed it the following season as well under coach Vince Lombardi, who the famous trophy is now named after.
The NFL was formed in 1920 under a different name and then two years later it was renamed as the National Football League.
| League | National Football League (NFL) |
| No. of teams | 32 |
| Most titles | Green Bay Packers (13) |
| TV partner(s) | CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN, NFL Network, Telemundo Deportes |
| Founded | 1920 |