NFL Preseason Betting: Should You Wager on Exhibition Games?

Preseason NFL: A Different Beast for Bettors

I once won seven consecutive preseason bets in August 2020. I felt invincible. Then the regular season started, and I realised that everything I had learned from those seven games was essentially worthless — different players, different game plans, different stakes. Preseason NFL is not a preview of the regular season. It is a separate competition played by different people under different rules, and betting on it requires an entirely different analytical framework.

The NFL typically schedules three preseason games per team in August, though this has varied in recent years. Since 2007, the league has played 62 international regular-season games, with nine planned for 2026 — but none of those international fixtures are preseason. Exhibition games are domestic affairs, played in front of half-empty stadiums, with coaching staffs focused on roster evaluation rather than winning. The results are, by design, meaningless to the teams involved.

Roster Turnover and Playing Time: Why Preseason Lines Are Noisy

NFL total revenue exceeded $23 billion in fiscal 2024, but almost none of that revenue depends on preseason results. Teams treat these games as extended auditions for roster spots, which means the players on the field in a preseason game bear little resemblance to the 53-man roster that takes the field in Week 1.

First-string starters typically play one quarter or less — sometimes not at all. Coaches have no incentive to risk injury to their best players in a game that does not count. The second and third quarters feature second-string players competing for backup roles, and the fourth quarter is dominated by undrafted free agents and late-round draft picks trying to earn a spot on the practice squad.

The implication for betting is severe: the point spread on a preseason game is not pricing the quality of the two NFL teams. It is pricing a specific combination of playing-time decisions that are not publicly confirmed until hours before kick-off. If one team rests all of its starters and the other plays its first-string offence for two quarters, the spread is immediately invalidated — and this happens regularly.

Sportsbooks know this, which is why preseason margins are wider than regular-season margins. The overround on a preseason spread can reach 7-9%, compared to 4-5% during the regular season. The sportsbook is charging you more because it is pricing a more uncertain outcome, which means you need a larger edge to overcome the margin.

The totals market in preseason carries its own distortions. Scoring tends to be erratic — first-team offences can look explosive against second-team defences in the early stages, then the game devolves into a low-scoring slog once the backups take over. The result is that preseason game totals are difficult to model because the scoring pace in the first quarter has almost no relationship to the scoring pace in the fourth. Any totals bet in preseason is essentially a coin flip wrapped in a wider-than-normal margin.

Injuries during preseason add another layer of noise. A key starter going down with a minor injury in the second quarter will often be pulled as a precaution — something that would never happen during a meaningful game. The absence reshuffles the remaining playing time, changes the offensive or defensive scheme, and invalidates whatever projection you built before kick-off. I have learned to treat preseason betting as a fundamentally different exercise from regular-season handicapping, one where information management matters more than analytical depth.

Where Value Hides (If It Does) in Preseason Markets

Let me be honest: I bet very lightly on preseason, and in some years I skip it entirely. The signal-to-noise ratio is the worst of any NFL product. But there are narrow windows where value can exist, and they are worth knowing about even if you choose not to exploit them.

The first window is coaching staff evaluation. Teams with new head coaches or offensive/defensive coordinators have a structural incentive to play their starters longer in preseason, because the coaching staff needs to evaluate how the new system functions with first-team talent. If one team has a new coaching regime and the other has a stable, veteran staff, the new-coaching team may play its starters deeper into the game, creating a talent mismatch in the second and third quarters that the spread does not fully reflect.

The second window is roster-bubble intensity. Teams with fierce competition at key positions — particularly quarterback, where the starter-backup distinction matters enormously — play those position battles out on the preseason field. A team with a legitimate quarterback competition has a motivated passer taking meaningful reps, while a team with an established starter has a backup running vanilla plays. That motivation differential can affect scoring and game flow.

The third window is the final preseason game (often called “dress rehearsal”), which has historically featured the most starters and the most representative game plans. Some teams treat this game as a near-regular-season event, playing starters for a full half. Others sit everyone. The key is identifying which approach each team takes before the game, usually by monitoring coach press conferences and beat-reporter updates during the week.

Even with these angles, I cap my preseason betting at one unit per game maximum, and I rarely bet more than two or three preseason games per year. The variance is enormous, the data is unreliable, and the margins are wider than anything you face during the regular season. If you find yourself betting every preseason game on the slate, step back and ask whether the edge is genuine or whether you are simply filling the void of the off-season with action for its own sake — because that is a habit that will carry into September and cost you real money when the games count. For a comprehensive understanding of how the preseason fits into the broader NFL calendar, the season structure guide covers every phase from August through the Super Bowl.

Written by the editors at American Football Betting Online.