How to read the 76ers board: moneyline, spread, total and the hold

Open any Sixers game on the board and you get six tables: both sides of the moneyline, both sides of the spread, and the over and the under on the total. Each table lines up the same position across every venue that quotes it. This is what the columns mean and how they are worked out, using the numbers on Wednesday night's game at Indiana.

Three ways to price one game

Moneyline. Pick the winner, nothing else. A minus number marks the favorite and tells you what you would have to put up to clear $100 in profit. A plus number marks the underdog and tells you what $100 earns. On Wednesday morning, ESPN's odds feed showed DraftKings with the Sixers at -198 and the Pacers at +164 for the game in Indianapolis. At -198, $198 clears $100. At +164, $100 clears $164.

Spread. The favorite gives points and the underdog gets them. DraftKings had the Sixers -5.5 at the same moment. The Sixers have to win by six or more for that side to cash; the Pacers cash by winning outright or losing by five or fewer. The price attached to a spread is the cost of taking that number. Sportsbooks usually hang it close to -110: DraftKings had -108 on the Sixers and -112 on the Pacers. A prediction market, where the two sides are matched trader against trader, tends to sit much closer to even.

Total. Ignore who wins and add the two scores together. DraftKings' total was 236.5, so the over needs 237 combined points and the under needs 236 or fewer. NBA totals live in a narrow band compared with football, and a few points of movement usually means news: a star ruled out, a back-to-back, a late scratch. The Sixers have already seen all three this season.

The per-$100 column

American odds and contract prices do not compare at a glance, so the board turns every quote into one figure: the profit a winning $100 position returns.

• Plus odds: the profit is the number itself. +164 returns $164.
• Minus odds: divide 100 by the odds, then multiply by 100. -198 returns $50.51; -108 returns $92.59; -112 returns $89.29.
• A prediction-market contract priced at p (66 cents is 0.66) with a fee rate r: profit = 100 / (p × (1 + r × (1 − p))) − 100.

Take a Sixers contract at 66 cents, about the same probability as -194. With no fee, $100 buys about 151.5 contracts and a win returns $51.52. That is what a pre-game trade taken on Novig's app or website returns, because Novig charges no fee on pre-game straight trades. Take the same contract once the game has started, as a taker on Novig, and a live fee comes off the return; the rate is on Novig's fee schedule. On Kalshi, whose fee is built on a 7% rate, the same price returns $47.99. As a check on the formula, a 60-cent contract at 7% returns $62.13, not the $66.67 it would pay with no fee.

Same team, same probability on the screen, three different answers. That gap is why the column exists.

Best price and the gap

Every table is sorted by the per-$100 figure, highest at the top, and the leader is tagged Best. Each row underneath shows how many dollars it gives up against that leader on the same $100. On the moneyline that comparison is clean. On spreads and totals the board ranks the number first and the price second. In a made-up example, Sixers -5 at -115 ranks above Sixers -5.5 at -108 for the side giving points, because the half point can decide the result. When two venues are dealing different numbers, the row says so.

The hold

If you read one column, read this one. Turn both sides of a two-way market into implied probabilities and add them. A perfectly fair market adds to 100%. Anything above that is what the venue keeps.

On Wednesday morning's DraftKings prices for Sixers-Pacers, -198 implies 66.4% and +164 implies 37.9%. Together that is 104.3%, a hold of about 4.3% on the moneyline. The spread, at -108 and -112, implies 51.9% and 52.8%, a hold of about 4.8%. That margin is set before the opening tip.

A prediction market has no house on the other side, so its two sides usually add up to within a cent or two of 100%. If the best buy on the Sixers is 66 cents and the best buy on the Pacers is 35 cents, the hold is about 1%, and all of it is the distance between buyers and sellers on the order book.

The board prints each venue's hold beside its row, worked out from that venue's own two prices at the moment of the fetch. It says nothing about who wins. It tells you what the venue charges to take part.

How fresh the numbers are

The board refreshes roughly every ten minutes. NBA lines move fastest in the hour or two before tip, when teams post their final injury reports and rest decisions. The Sixers ruled Joel Embiid out of the second game of their first back-to-back a day after he said publicly that he wanted to play, and a price taken before that news was a price on a different team. Use the board to see which venue tends to pay more on which side, then check the live price before you act. The full schedule is on the Sixers team page, and every game gets its own page, starting with tonight's at Indiana.