The new NBA season begins next week with defending champions San Antonio Spurs facing Dallas Mavericks in the opening round of fixtures in the early hours of Wednesday morning UK-time.

With betting on basketball continuing to grow in popularity, here we highlight how spread betting on basketball differs from placing traditional fixed odds bets on the sport.

Outright season betting on basketball

As British-based basketball enthusiasts eagerly await the start of the new campaign and prepare themselves for some late nights of TV watching, most are sure to be looking at the outright match and championship betting.

Spreadex has Cleveland Cavaliers as the 3/1 outright favourites to win the NBA title this season, after the Cavaliers completed the capture of former Miami Heat ace LeBron James.

Last season’s champions San Antonio Spurs, who secured their fifth NBA championship by winning the five game series 4-1 against Heat in June, are 4/1 shots ahead of Oklahoma City Thunder at 6/1 and Chicago Bulls at 13/2. Heat themselves are way down the betting at 33/1.

As for the Conference Winner betting, Cleveland Cavaliers are 11/10 favourites to win the Eastern Conference ahead of Chicago Bulls at 11/4 and Washing Wizards at 17/2 while San Antonio Spurs are 11/5 fancies to win the Western Conference with Oklahoma 3/1 and Los Angeles Clippers 7/2.

In terms of the long-term basketball spread betting prices, Spreadex’s Regular Season Wins market gives every team a spread of their expected season wins from 82 games played.

Cleveland Cavaliers again lead the charge here with a spread of 57 – 58.5, with San Antonio Spurs on 56 – 57.5 and Los Angeles Clippers 55 – 56.5.

For every team here you can look at their predicted number of season wins and buy on the price if you think the quote is too low, or sell if you think it’s too high.

It’s important to note that with spread betting, although profits can be great if you call a bet correctly, you can lose more than your initial stake should your bet go against you.

For example, if you think Chicago Bulls are overpriced at an estimated 54 – 55.5 season wins you could sell at 54 and if you felt the Philadelphia 76ers would get more than their predicted 15.5 – 17 season wins you could buy at 17.

If the Bulls ended with just 45 season wins, your sell at 54 would make a nine point profit (54 – 45), however, if the Bulls went on to win 60 games in total that sell would lose six times your stake (54 – 60). If Philadelphia ended on 22 wins for the season, your buy at 17 would make a profit of five times your stake (22 – 17), however if they managed just 12 season wins, your bet would lose five times your stake (12 – 17).

These prices are updated throughout the season depending on teams’ performances allowing punters to open new bets at different points during the campaign or to close out of bets before the end of the season, either to take a profit of cut a loss.

Spread betting and fixed odds betting on NBA matches

When betting on the matches themselves, the most popular way of placing fixed odds bets tends to be either on the main Match Winner, Handicap Betting on each team to beat their predicted winning or losing margin (Point Spread), Over/Under betting on a Total Match Points prediction or betting on whether the Total Points amount will end up being odd or even.

Spread betting on basketball offers a different take on some of the above markets.

For example, the main spread betting Supremacy market offers a prediction of the winning margin of one team over another in points. So in a similar way to the predicted fixed odds Point Spread, you can choose to either get with or get against a team by either buying or selling on the Points Supremacy spread betting market.

For example, Spreadex’s Points Supremacy quote for the final match of the five game series between Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs was San Antonio/Miami 4 – 5.5. This meant San Antonio were predicted to win by about five points. Anyone who bought at 5.5 expected San Antonio to win by at least six points.

The eventual scoreline was Miami 87 San Antonio 104 so a 17 point margin of victory meaning anyone who had bought at 5.5 would have made 11.5 times their stake (17 – 5.5) but anyone who had sold at 4 would have lost 13 times their stake (4 – 17).

Other popular basketball spread bets include betting on the predicted Total Points to be scored in a match, the predicted Total Points per team and Total Points per quarter. For matches offered in-play, these markets are updated as the game progresses again allowing for bets to be opened or closed out at any time during the match.

For big games, Spreadex will also offer markets such as Player Points (number of points to be scored by a named player in a match) and Total 3-Point Field Goals to be scored in a match.

So next time you settle down for some through-the-night basketball viewing and fancy a bet to give you a bit of interest, trying your hand at some basketball spread bets could be the perfect way to ensure you stay awake during the early hours!