Featuring body checks, poke checks, fleet-footed dodges, and plenty of goals, lacrosse offers up an exciting mix of physicality and skill on the turf.
As with all popular sports, and even with the more niche competitions, fans seek lacrosse betting lines whenever the PLL Championship Series, National Lacrosse League, or NCAA Lacrosse is in season.
To help the fans of the oldest sport to originate from North America find their footing in modern online betting markets, we’ve created this guide to help you work out how to bet on lacrosse.
Lacrosse Betting: Game Lines
Regardless of whether you’re betting on NLL, NCAA, or PLL lacrosse competitions, the main feature of pre-game betting will be the game lines. Here’s a look at each game line and what they mean.
How to Bet on the Spread for Lacrosse
The first game line you’ll see is the spread. This is a form of handicap betting in which you back a team to either win by a set margin or keep the game closer than the value given.
You’ll see that the favoured team gets a minus figure on the spread. This gives them an imaginary points disadvantage before the start of the game. You’re betting on them to beat the other team by that number or more.
For the underdogs, you’ll see a positive number. This means that the team can lose by that figure or less, or win by any margin, and your bet will win.
As an example, let’s say we have the New York Riptide facing off against the Buffalo Bandits in the NLL. The Riptide come in as the underdogs, so the spread gives them a +3.5 handicap. The Bandits, as the favourites, get -3.5.
If the game ends 10-8 in favour of the Bandits, those who backed Buffalo on the spread would lose their bet. This is because the winning margin wasn’t by 3.5 points or more (+3.5).
Bettors on the Riptide on the spread would win despite the team losing because their +3.5 handicap enabled them to win 10-11.5 on the spread’s game line.
How to Bet on Totals for Lacrosse
Totals game lines in Lacrosse betting refer to the total number of points to be scored in the game’s final scoreline. You’ll be presented with two options: under and over a set value.
For the National Lacrosse League, the total game line often floats around the low 20s, with the numbers split by a .5 value as only whole points are scored in the sport.
If we take the San Diego Seals against the Albany FireWolves game, the total game line was set at over 22.5 and under 22.5.
Let’s say the Seals win the game 12-11. This score would payout to any total bettors who backed the over 22.5 game line as 23 points were scored in total.
How to Bet on the Moneyline for Lacrosse
The moneyline is the most straightforward of lacrosse game line bets. Here, you’re betting on which team you think will win the game at hand.
It’s that simple. If you think that the Vancouver Warriors will beat the Saskatchewan Rush, then take their odds. This is also the lacrosse market where you’ll find the longest and shortest odds.
For spread and totals game line betting, the bookies often put the line close to evens, so the odds will usually be -110 to -120 or maybe a bit longer at +100 to -130.
On the moneyline, the odds better reflect the anticipated dominance of a team. For example, the Calgary Roughnecks could have odds of -160 to beat the Colorado Mammoth, who themselves get moneyline odds of +124 to win.
Lacrosse Betting: Team Futures
There are two types of team futures in lacrosse betting. You’ll get futures markets that pertain to the competition at hand, such as the PLL Championship, and you’ll get team performance markets, like season win counts.
How to Bet on League Winners for Lacrosse
To bet on league winners in lacrosse betting, you need to make your way to the lacrosse section, click on the league that you want to bet on, select the team futures section, and then the outright winner tab.
Here, you’ll get odds on every team to win the competition. For the 2024 NCAA Lacrosse Championship, as an example, you could back the more favoured Virginia at +475 and then every team between them and the massive underdogs, Hampton, at +100,000!
In this market, your team needs to win the championship for your bet to win. If they make it to the final and lose, your bet will lose. Should your team hoist that trophy this season, your bet will pay out.
How to Bet on Wins for Lacrosse
Regular season wins is another popular team futures market in lacrosse betting. Each team is given its own under and over line for how many wins they’ll get during the competition’s regular season.
Depending on the perceived strength of the team, the line will differ. For example, Duke’s regular season wins line in NCAA Lacrosse was set at over 12.5 and under 12.5, with both options given odds of -115.
For Loyola Maryland, you’d be able to back -150 odds for getting over 6.5 regular season wins and +120 for winning under 6.5 games.
Using Duke as an example, if you back them to win under 12.5 games in the regular season and they go on to win 13 games, your bet loses. Should they tally 12 wins or fewer, your bet would win.
Lacrosse Betting: Live and In-play
Missed the opening face-off? That doesn’t matter for your betting now that you can find lacrosse in the live betting markets!
Also known as in-play betting, you can find all of the popular lacrosse game lines and odds after the game has started by finding the game on the live betting page.
These odds will be adjusted from the pre-game odds as the live action can suggest that a team will be more dominant or is close to scoring. For teams winning at the time of your search, this means shorter odds to bet on.
Still, savvy lacrosse fans can make the most of live odds. If you can sense momentum shifting to a team that’s behind on the scoreline, for example, you can usually bet on them at longer odds than in the pre-game lines.
Lacrosse Betting: Parlay Bets
Parlay bets are a popular way to get enhanced odds by combining several single bets into one. You can pick from two to 15 bets for your parlay and will need all of your picks to win for the bet to come in.
In lacrosse betting, you can populate your parlay bet with moneyline, total, or spread picks from different games or a combination of all three kinds of game line betting options.
What you can’t do with a parlay bet, however, is combine more than one spread, total, or moneyline pick from the same game with others.
Still, you can take the moneyline odds from one, totals from another, and spread odds from a third game to make a three-pick lacrosse parlay bet.
Lacrosse parlay bets offer you enhanced odds by multiplying the odds from each pick together. Then, those combined odds get multiplied by your wager to offer the payout should all of your parlay picks win.
Now that you know the ins and outs of lacrosse betting lines and markets, you can place your bets on all of the biggest games this season!
*Credit for all images in this article belongs to Alamy*
