Imperative that an online betting site provides a FAQ or in-depth tutorial on how to make these wagers. How to Place a Bet on a WWE Betting Site. Placing a pro wrestling bet on a WWE betting site isn’t as simple as wagering on popular sports like the NFL and NBA. There’s a bit more of a process to betting on the WWE compared to other sports. The everything app for sports bettors! Sports betting odds from Vegas and online sportsbooks, everything from spreads & totals to team totals & live bets. All the live scores, breaking injury updates, proprietary betting stats, up-to-date line movements, and a community of bettors all in the palm of your hand with the #1 sports odds & live scores app! And now introducing a Bankroll Management.
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While everyone knows that professional wrestling is pre-scripted, you can still place bets on the WWE and other major wrestling promotions. The process and the layout of the odds is as easy as can be if you know how to bet on MMA or how to bet on boxing, though the actual experience may feel more like you’re betting on pure entertainment.
How, exactly, does one bet on a WWE event? In this article, we’ll walk you through the following essential components, and you’ll be fully equipped to start betting on the WWE!
While the WWE runs year-round, with weekly shows on both Monday night (RAW) and Tuesday night (Smackdown), sportsbooks don’t make every WWE show available to wager on, only the marquee pay-per-views.
It’s a safe bet (so to speak) that the majority of sportsbooks will post lines for the WWE’s “Big Four”: Wrestlemania, Royal Rumble, Summerslam, and Survivor Series.
The more minor PPVs—like Elimination Chamber, Fastlane, and TLC—may be available on certain sites, but don’t count on it.
WWE wagers are usually made available about three to four days in advance of the relevant event. So if you are keen to wager on professional wrestling, make sure you know when the big events are scheduled to take place.
The “Big Four” WWE events are as follows:
The limited time-frame is understandable. Sportsbooks are a bit wary of allowing too much money to be placed on predetermined events, and the short betting window helps alleviate that issue. They also tend to cap the amount you can wager or the amount you can win on WWE bets, with payouts ordinarily capped at around $50 per bet.
Again, this limitation is pretty reasonable when you recall that, once upon a time, certain insiders and even actual WWE superstars were starting to bet on the match outcomes.
Where does one go to bet on pro wrestling? Numerous online sportsbooks provide odds on the major WWE pay-per-views, including:
Unlike other combat sports like MMA, sportsbooks usually only provide odds and lines on which of the two combatants in a match will win (or, in the case of Royal Rumble, which of the 30 combatants will last to the bitter end).
You generally won’t see related prop bets like method of victory that you do in MMA and boxing, though it isn’t unheard of. For instance, some sites may offer a Royal Rumble prop on who will get thrown out of the ring first or who will eliminate the most wrestlers.
From time to time, you may also see odds on celebrities—like Donald Trump or Lavar Ball—wrestling in the WWE, much like there are currently odds on whether Floyd Mayweather will fight in the UFC. These bets will be subject to certain time constraints, usually a calendar year.
A typical WWE line will look something like this:
This line has Lesnar as the favorite at -500 (bet $500 to win $100) and Strowman as the underdog at +300 (win $300 on a $100 wager). Of course, you aren’t required to bet $500 on Lesnar or $100 on Strowman. You can wager whatever amount you please (subject to a sportsbooks’ rules) and the payout will be commensurate. Since a $100 wager on Strowman would earn you a $300 profit, a $50 wager would earn you a $150 profit.
As mentioned, betting sites usually cap maximum wagers on WWE events because they know the outcomes are predetermined and that bettors may have insider information. If a site has a $50 max-winnings limit on WWE bets, then, in the example above, the most you would be able to wager on Brock Lesnar would be $250, and the most you would be able to wager on Braun Strowman would be $16.66.
In reality, sportsbooks don’t use WWE wagers to make their money. They use them to attract people to their sites and to get new users to sign up, and they hope that WWE bettors will become regular and frequent sports bettors. For this reason, many people in the betting community regard WWE betting as an extension of light-hearted, entertainment prop betting, rather than something that requires close study and carefully applied strategy.
Still, betting on the WWE is trickier than you might think. Just because the winners are predetermined doesn’t mean you will always get the most obvious results. The WWE creative team throws a few “swerves” in from time-to-time, and there are always toss-up matches that could go either way, plus matches that end in disqualification.
Like wagering on any sport, you can often find value in underdogs when it comes to WWE betting. However, as mentioned, most sportsbooks will cap potential winnings at a fairly low amount, usually in the $50 range these days to prevent WWE writers and superstars cashing in on their own storylines.
If you don’t follow professional wrestling too closely, it might be extremely difficult to know who to bet on and where the value might be in WWE lines.
The best strategy is to do your research. There are many websites (including ours) that analyze the odds and give predictions for each match. Most of the people who are in-the-know understand the inner workings of pro wrestling. It really comes down to an understanding of who the WWE likes and who they’re building to be big stars. WWE writers also tend to follow a very old-school philosophy of how to manage talent and create a story arc.
But even the smartest and most educated prognosticators can get things wrong as there is often an element of surprise in the bigger matches, and that’s where you can find underdogs that have value. There just might be $50 in it for you.
Still not sure about lines, odds, money lines, or some of the other fundamental aspects of sports betting? Check out our betting 101 guides, or guides for everything you need to know about how to bet on sports.
Wrestling is a tricky thing to bet on. While most US sportsbooks do take bets on wrestling such as the WWE, there is an excellent reason why you might want to be somewhat cautious about it. Wrestling (at least in terms of the WWE – World Wrestling Entertainment) is not actually a sport, but sports entertainment.
This means that the outcomes of its events are fixed, and thus, it may be possible for some people to have insider knowledge over who is going to win beforehand. Sports Betting USA shows the best sportsbooks for US players.
That doesn’t make it any less fun to bet on for your average punter, and other wrestling competitions, such as Olympic wrestling certainly aren’t fixed. However, we’re focusing on the WWE here…
Aside from the ethical dilemma of betting on something that has a fixed outcome, what competitions do you have open for you when it comes to WWE betting?
Given the nature of the “sport”, betting on wrestling is always a bizarre affair. WWE wrestling betting has a completely different set of betting options to most other American sports. Most are one-off, outright bets, and many aren’t based on winners of matches, since those can (in theory) be known earlier, hence the surplus of “prop” bets you can find here.
Form doesn’t matter much in a sport which is rigged from the start. However, looking back at past results can usually give you an edge all the same. The WWE is generally keen to either please or entirely frustrate the crowd, so it is unlikely that you’re going to get a “neutral” result to a match.
Look for the result which would cause the most hype in any match-up. There are also several other areas you can look at when doing your homework before betting.
Some of the other things you may wish to consider before placing a bet on WWE wrestling matches include:
Funnily enough, not everywhere. Most major US sportsbooks do not offer betting on WWE, on the basis that it is fixed, and the legality of that is very shady indeed. However, many offshore sportsbooks popular with European players will offer WWE betting.
A quick trip to one of these sportsbooks will often allow US punters to place bets on the latest wrestling action.