Quality over quantity on football betting

If you’ve been watching the NFL in recent years, you’ve seen plenty of ads for sports betting. While you’re watching your favorite team, like the NY Giants or the New England Patriots, each commercial break seems to announce another online gambling site.

Sometimes you’ll even see other online games for entertainment advertised along with online sportsbooks. These same commercials are even on the radio and wherever else sports fans might be watching or listening, and there are a lot of them!

But, when it comes to football betting and placing your own money as wagers, quality over quantity is the rule. Here’s why.

The Perils of Betting Too Much

Focusing your betting on high-quality wagers makes you less likely to overexpose yourself to bad bets, unpredictable outcomes, and financial issues. Even if you’re comfortable with the amount of money you’re wagering, it’s easy to fall down a rabbit hole and end up scrambling to cover lost bets. There are serious pitfalls that can occur if you forget to be mindful of three major perils of betting too much, too often, and focusing on quantity instead of quality.

Gambling Addiction

Responsible gambling is the number one priority for all football betting. That means limiting your bets to what you can afford to lose and being wary of developing bad habits. There are countless stories of people who made mistakes with their gambling habits and paid a steep price.

For example, Craig Carton, a famous NYC radio host, ended up serving time in prison after he was found guilty of fraud related to a scheme he employed to pay off casinos and gambling debts. Carton turned his life around and is even back on the air as a radio host, but he served more than a year in federal prison.

The moral of the story is that sometimes it makes sense not to bet. Maybe you’re overextended. Maybe you realized you’re not being selective enough, or maybe there just aren’t any good lines to bet this week. A smart football bettor will know when to walk away and save their money for another week.

Bad Actors

You also don’t want to place lots of bets with a whole bunch of different online casinos or sportsbooks. That’s because quite a few of them have unscrupulous practices. The last thing you want is to have your personal information stolen by a scammer while you’re enjoying your wagers on the big game.

So, make sure that any place you are gambling online has the good sense to invest in endpoint security that protects your accounts and personal information. With the explosion of online gambling and more states relaxing their prohibitions on it, there will be a corresponding increase in the number of scammers looking to take advantage of new gamblers and those who make the mistake of prioritizing quantity over quality.

Don’t fall prey to bad actors or their schemes. Stick to making good wagers rather than trying to gamble on everything. Be smart with how you bet, and don’t try to make yourself part of the action. Gamblers who enjoy the best results are dispassionate and analytical, not emotional.

Forgetting About the Game

The more you gamble on football, the more you will inevitably focus on your investment instead of the action on the screen. That loss of focus on the competition on the field can potentially lead you to a place where you’re no longer a football fan but a gambler. Do you really want to be rooting against your family’s favorite team because you have money on the other team?

When you’re handicapping games, it’s easy to get lost in mountains of information, stats, and opinions. Then you have to factor in the money line, the injury report, and your gut feeling. Don’t let yourself drown in the details and forget about the glory of the game and all the innocence lost when it’s corrupted by gambling.

Football Betting and Quality Over Quantity: Bottom Line

Wagering on exciting sports like football can pump the excitement up even more than a big game. During the course of a season, wagering on scoring, outcomes, and stats can be exhilarating even when some of the games are a little boring. But if you try to bet on every game or every over-under, you’re going to end up behind the eight ball and probably in debt.

Instead, keep your focus on making quality bets, not making more of them.