Legal Betting On The Bills
As the only New York team to actually play its games in New York (New Era Field in Orchard Park), the Buffalo Bills are the ultimate Big Apple home team. They also have the distinction of being the chief rollercoaster of the New York sports betting scene of the early 1990s, when they won four straight AFC titles and lost four straight Super Bowls. Over the years since then, legal betting on the Bills has been less of a high-hope gut-punch, as the Bills remain the only NFL team that hasn’t made it to the playoffs so far this millennium.
Still, the Buffalo Bills seem like they’re on the upswing. After being an afterthought for so long amongst the New York sports betting community, a renewed focus on the run game and an aging New England Patriots rival suddenly has Buffalo’s potential way up in the AFC East. For longtime fans and newcomers alike, now’s the time to get involved with legal betting on the Bills. When perennial underdogs actually start winning, there’s always a huge window of opportunity for savvy bettors.
And as some of the savviest bettors out there, New York residents are further aware that federal anti-gambling laws like the Wire Act, PASPA, and the UIGEA do not apply to them. Indeed, these laws only affect domestic sportsbooks, leaving folks in NY and all across America free to wager with legal online sportsbooks based overseas, outside of US jurisdiction. Thus, if you use a reputable Internet betting shop like SportsBetting, BetOnline, or 5Dimes, you can rest assured that wagering on the Buffalo Bills is 100% legal.
While it may seem like a daunting task, it’s actually very simple to get started betting on the Buffalo Bills. Just sign up for free at one of the legal online sportsbooks above, deposit a few dollars into your account, and start browsing the boards. Placing wagers on the Bills is as easy as ordering a pizza on the Internet. Just a few clicks or taps and a simple confirmation is all it takes to place your wagers, and your betting slip is saved right there in your sportsbook account. Whenever you win a wager, your account will automatically be credited with your earnings.
Legal online sportsbooks will not let you wager with money you don’t already have in your account with them. Thus, when it comes to betting on the Bills, it’s crucial that you deposit funds into your account in a timely fashion that works for you. Checks, money orders, wire transfers, and similar deposit methods are expensive to initiate and take up to two weeks to go through (with similar rates and fees for withdrawals). If you’re looking to place a legal Bills bet for this weekend’s game, for example, you won’t be able to access your funds in time if you go with these options. Credit and debit cards, on the other hand, allow you to deposit instantly into your legal online sportsbook of choice, but they won’t work for withdrawals, so you’ll have to have some other avenue in place for that regardless.
There is a better option for streamlining any legal betting on the Bills you intend to do. If you want a one-stop shop for both buy-ins and payouts, you can use Bitcoin, and it’s accepted at all the best online sportsbooks. With Bitcoin, you’ll get excellent transfer rates on both deposits and withdrawals, as both actions usually take less than an hour to complete. You’ll also get better security and anonymity with Bitcoin because its blockchain technology makes it much more difficult for bad actors to hijack your funds over the Internet. Remember, you don’t have to stick to dollar bills to bet on the Bills – you can just use Bitcoin instead.
Before you go all Machine Gun Kelly and start spraying your Buffalo Bills bets all over Christendom, you need to make sure you understand how Buffalo Bills betting odds work. As with all American sports and sports teams, Bills betting odds will be presented via the moneyline. The moneyline is an industry standard, used in the US sports betting community to designate a given wager’s buy-in and payout numbers.
The moneyline will be a positive or negative number. In most cases, a positive moneyline number indicates an underdog, and it shows the amount of money that can be won on a $100 wager. A negative number, on the other hand, is used for the favorite, and it represents how much money must be wagered to win $100. The bigger the favorite, the smaller the payout will be, while the bigger the underdog, the more money you’ll make with an upset victory. Moneylines are almost always shown in parentheses alongside both sides of a particular bet.
When it comes to legal betting on the Bills, the most common wager type by far is the point spread. With point spread bets, a sportsbook handicaps the team that’s expected to win a given contest, “giving” some of their points to the weaker team. Here’s how that looks:
- New York Patriots -5.5 (-110)
- at
- Buffalo Bills +5.5 (-110)
Since the Pats are 5.5-point favorites in this example, the Bills essentially get a 5.5-point head start on the scoreboard (hence their +5.5 designation). Thus, any action on this Bills spread will win provided that Buffalo loses by 5 points or less. On the other side, New England has to win by at least 6 points to win the wager. (Sportsbooks often use half-point increments to prevent “push” results, which generally require refunds of all the action on both sides of the affected bet.)
Another popular way to engage in legal betting on the Bills is via the straight up bet. The straight up bet, also called the straight moneyline bet, foregoes sportsbook handicapping, instead establishing favorites and underdogs via the different payouts attached to either team in a given matchup. All you do is pick the winner. If you’re participating in this kind of legal Bills betting, you’ll probably see something like this at your sportsbook of choice:
- Buffalo Bills (-145)
- vs.
- Miami Dolphins (+180)
Here, the Bills are the favorites to beat Miami, and you’ll have to wager $145 to win $100 if you’re betting on them. The Dolphins, as usual, are underdogs, and they have a much better payout of $180 for every $100 bet. Remember, you don’t have to actually wager these amounts to bet on Bills contests – they merely show the bet’s wager-payout ratio. Many legal online sportsbooks will accept Bills bets in amounts as little as 25 cents.
The last of the “Big Three” Buffalo Bills bets is the over/under, or totals bet. With this kind of wager, you don’t actually pick winners and losers; rather, over/unders require bettors to decide whether or not a given game’s final combined score will be higher than (over) or lower than (under) the sportsbook’s prediction for the matchup.
- New York Jets
- at
- Buffalo Bills
- O/U 44.5 (-110)
The Jets, who are usually a punchline among NFL analysts and AFC pundits, don’t tend to score a lot of late. As such, the over/under on the above Bills tilt is somewhat low. If the final score is, say, 27-14, then the “under” side of the wager would win. 41 is less than 44.5, after all. However, if the Bills go on a tear and win 33-17, the combined point total would be 50, which is “over” 44.5. With totals betting, it is extra important to study the comparative abilities of both teams’ offensive and defensive squads, particularly as they relate to scoring rates and clock management.
All the top legal online sportsbooks also have a huge selection of Buffalo Bills prop bets. The most common of these are player props, which are wagers on individual, single-game performances of specific players on the team. Bills player props can be anything from how many touchdowns the quarterback will rush for to how many targets a cornerback will get to how many field goals the placekicker will make. Different sportsbooks will have different Bills player props.
Team props on the Bills are also available at your favorite online sportsbooks. These are similar to player props, except that they apply to entire teams over the course of a given game. Bills team prop bets can encompass pretty much any team-based statistic, but the most common ones are wagers on things like total offense, touchdowns and field goals scored, turnovers, takeaways, and the like.
In addition to the above, most sportsbooks will feature several other kinds of legal betting on the Bills. These include alternate lines, Bills parlays, teasers, pleasers, and more. There is also live betting on the Bills to consider, which is extremely popular in New York sports betting circles.
Live betting on the Bills has not only boosted viewership of the Buffalo team, it’s even allowed more people an extended opportunity to enjoy legal betting on the Bills nationwide. Unlike normal sports gambling, live betting actually lets Bills fans put action on short-lived in-game results. Live betting, also called in-game betting, lets sports gamblers wager on things like whether the next play will be a pass or a run, how many points the next drive will result in, whether or not the star wideout will drop his next pass, and so on.
There is literally no limit to the kinds of live Bills bets sportsbooks can offer, and each service will have slightly different takes on display. Because of the fluid, constantly-changing nature of live betting, it’s critical that you watch every snap of any Bills game you’re live betting on.
You’re probably used to watching the Bills each Sunday on your iPhone or Android handset, so it’s only natural that you’d expect there to be a Bills betting app of some kind. Unfortunately, there isn’t one, as Apple and Google do not allow real gambling apps in the App Store or on Google Play.
All that notwithstanding, you can still hit the road without abandoning your passion for legal betting on the Bills, because all the top sportsbooks have designed mobile “web app” versions of their main sites to suit the needs of their on-the-go clientele. Just visit BetOnline, SportsBetting, 5Dimes, etc. from your mobile device, and you can enjoy optimized mobile interfaces crafted to be quick, efficient, and easy to use on the small screen. Plus, with mobile Bills betting, you still get the added security that your mobile phone or tablet provides, so betting on Buffalo is safer than ever.
Since there are literally dozens (if not hundreds) of websites that offer legal betting on the Bills and legal New York betting, it’s a good idea to use some discretion before sending a potential scammer a bunch of your hard-earned money. Fortunately, finding a reputable, respected sportsbook for Buffalo Bills betting is easier done than said – all you need to do is sign up at an industry leader like BetOnline, SportsBetting, 5Dimes, BetDSI, or Bookmaker, and you can be confident that you’re getting the best lines, payouts, and perks for all your New York sports betting needs.
Each sportsbook is similar in form and function, but BetOnline and SportsBetting are the old guards of Internet sports gambling, and they kind of set the trends for the entire industry. They have mainstream wager types and hit the sweet spot for balancing their books compared to the competition. They also offer the most deposit and payout methods of any major Internet sportsbook. 5Dimes, on the other hand, is where you want to go for the wackiest, most unique Bills wagers and alternate lines around.
BetDSI and BookMaker are comparatively smaller sites, but they’re still just as renowned among New York sports betting enthusiasts, and they have the advantage of offering higher limit betting on the Bills and the rest of the NFL. High rollers should definitely consider these sites, but anyone betting on the Bills – regardless of bankroll – should entertain joining more than one sportsbook, since shopping around for the best odds is a good approach no matter how much action you have on the line.