There was a time, not too many years ago, when the linemakers would convene on Sunday night after the games to decide the lines for the upcoming schedule for all the games except for the teams involved in the next day’s Monday Night Football contest. The lines decided on, and presented initially to a group of wise guy players for their first shot at buying the numbers, were then refined and released to the books and posted late Sunday night.
When that was the process, opening lines meant something to do with the current state of the teams. In more recent years, I first noticed that some lines were so far off they required explanation. We might see the Cincinnati Bengals listed as a three point home favorite over the Baltimore Ravens on the posted opening line and now the Ravens were four point road favorites.
Were betters hitting the Ravens so hard that they actually shifted the line seven points overnight?
No, the huge shift in opening to current lines were the result of the books now offering opening spreads on games two, three, sometimes four weeks in advance. In other words, they might have an opening line with the Bengals favored, then Cincinnati’s Quarterback Joe Burrow is sidelined with an injury, which dramatically affects the current line but still has the media posting the opening line set before his injury.
The advent of in-game betting has also forced the books into practices that weren’t common a decade ago. In years before in-game wagering, all bets had to be made before the game kicked off. Sports books in Nevada were under tight scrutiny to guard against fraud. With in-game betting, patrolling the “illegal” late wagers is almost impossible to detect and enforce.
What I consider lost in the posting of future lines is that we were once able to see where the wise guy money was leaning early in the week. That’s because I had access to the early line, the number set before the spreads were offered to wise guys so the bookmakers could get clues on where their lines were soft. If the wise guys jumped on an opening line, before that spread was released for public consumption to the sports books, it would often be adjusted in response to the smart money moves.