Teasers feel like free money. The math says they usually are not. The exceptions — Wong teasers crossing 3 and 7 — are real and rare.
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Teasers and parlays are the most heavily-marketed NFL bets at Australian bookmakers and the most-discussed in betting communities. They feel like an obvious good deal — you move the spread in your favour by 6 points, what could go wrong? — and the marketing rarely bothers to mention that the bookmaker margin on a 2-team teaser compounds in a way that makes most teaser bets -EV by 5–8%. There is a narrow exception where the math actually works: Wong teasers crossing the 3 and 7 keys, on 2 legs only, at competitive AU prices. This piece covers the math, the exceptions, and the practical AU-specific considerations for actually betting NFL teasers and parlays.
A 6-point teaser lets you move the spread or total in your direction by 6 points on each leg, at the cost of price. At AU books a 2-team 6-point teaser typically prices at -120 to -110 (you wager $120 to win $100, or $110 to win $100). A 3-team 6-point teaser typically prices at +160 to +180. A 4-team prices around +300. The price is set so the bookmaker margin compounds with each leg you add.
The break-even hit rate for a 2-team teaser at -120 is given by1 / (1 + (100/120)) taken to the square root, which is approximately 73.9%. Each leg needs to hit at 73.9% for the bet to break even. At -110 the break-even is 72.4%. For a 3-team teaser at +180 the leg-level break-even is approximately 70.9%; at -110 for a 3-team teaser (rare at AU books, often US sharp books) the break-even is 63.6% per leg.
The question for any teaser is: do the legs you have selected hit at a rate above the break-even? For random NFL teaser legs, the answer is no. The unconditional hit rate for a random 6-point teaser leg is approximately 69–70%, which is below the 73.9% break-even for a standard AU 2-team teaser. This is why most teasers are -EV.
The exception to the standard teaser math comes from NFL margin distribution. NFL games disproportionately end on margins of 3 and 7 because of field goals and touchdowns. A teaser leg that crosses both the 3 and 7 keys captures the probability mass at both numbers, which pushes the leg hit rate above the random baseline.
The classic Wong teaser legs are:
Historical hit rates for Wong teaser legs sit at 74–76%, depending on the data set and the years sampled. At a -120 AU 2-team teaser price (73.9% break-even per leg), a 75% Wong teaser leg produces a 2-team teaser EV of approximately +2.5% ROI. Not enormous, but genuinely positive after the bookmaker margin. The edge has narrowed since the publication of Stanford Wong's analysis in the 1990s — AU books are increasingly pricing Wong teasers at worse prices (-130 or -140) when they detect the pattern. The current state: Wong teasers remain positive-EV at -120 or better, and -EV at -130 or worse.
AU books price teasers competitively on standard 2-team 6-point at -120 (matches US standard pricing). The hurts:
A traditional NFL parlay multiplies straight-bet prices. A 3-leg parlay at $1.91 per leg pays $1.91 × $1.91 × $1.91 = $6.97. The true odds with no margin would pay $8.00 (2 × 2 × 2). The bookmaker margin per leg compounds: a single -110 bet has 4.5% margin, a 3-leg parlay of -110 legs has roughly 12.9% margin, a 5-leg parlay has roughly 21%. AU parlay margins are typically 4.5–5% per leg on the main NFL markets — fair compared to US books — but the compounding still makes large parlays brutally negative.
Parlay strategy is therefore not about minimising the margin — it is about parlaying correlated events that are mispriced as independent. See the next section on same-game multis. Pure parlays across independent games are entertainment bets, not value bets.
AU books offer SGMs on NFL — typically up to 8 legs from a single game. The bookmaker uses a correlated probability model to set the price. The model is decent but not perfect, and specific correlation patterns are systematically mispriced.
Positively correlated legs that AU SGM models tend to under-correlate (giving longer odds than the true joint probability warrants):
Negatively correlated legs that AU SGM models tend to under-correlate (sometimes giving better-than-true odds when the negative correlation is real):
SGM legs are not the place to be a sucker — AU books restrict SGM limits aggressively on accounts that consistently bet correlated legs. Bookmakers identify SGM sharps faster than straight-bet sharps because the correlation pattern is detectable in the bet history. Treat SGM as a small fraction of total NFL volume.
Sportsbet and Ladbrokes routinely promote bonus bet placements on NFL teasers and parlays during the playoffs and Super Bowl. The math on a bonus bet placed on a teaser is different from cash because bonus bet stake is not returned on a winning bet. The effective bonus bet conversion rate scales with bet odds: a bonus bet on a -120 2-team teaser converts roughly 70% of face value into expected cash; a bonus bet on a +200 3-team teaser converts roughly 90% of face value if you can find a positive-EV combination. Putting bonus bets on higher-priced parlays is the standard bonus bet conversion strategy — NFL playoff promos are the highest-volume conversion window of the US sports calendar at AU books.
James covers the AU bookmaker market — pricing mechanics, line movement, promotional structures, and how the corporate books actually operate. Previously worked in financial markets before moving to sports analytics.
Neds runs one of the more aggressive promotional calendars among AU bookmakers. The turnover rules matter more than the headline offer amounts.
