Introducing the sports betting Odds Converter
A web app that lets you quickly convert lines and their implied probabilities
Sports betting has taken off in the United States in recent years. Wagering on sports became legal following a significant 2018 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that found the act which previously limited sports betting to only a handful of states unconstitutional.
So far, nearly half of U.S. states and the District of Columbia have embraced online and physical sports gambling by making it legal in their own states; plenty of others are considering it as well.
Professional sports leagues have seized on the opportunity, while large media companies like ESPN have identified betting as one of the best ways to drive bottom line growth. In recent years they’ve started putting the lines of each game on the ticker on the bottom of your screen, and have produced plenty of shows and spots dedicated to betting content. They even have a new betting app called ESPN Bet.
With this proliferation of sports gambling in the U.S. comes the need to understand what the heck all this betting stuff — with its funky terminology1 like “vigorish” — is all about.
My Odds Converter App allows sports betting novices and enthusiasts alike to easily convert betting odds from various international formats, including American, Decimal, and Fractional. It also calculates and displays the implied probabilities associated with the given odds, as well as theoretical payouts based on how much money you want to wager2.
If nothing else you can use the tool’s glossary to reference common sports betting terms, or quickly look up common odds conversions in the table.
This is not a novel concept — a simple Google search for “betting odds converter” will pull up various websites that allows you to do this today. In addition, converting the betting odds you see on TV can be just a click or voice command away these days with tools like Siri, Amazon Alexa or ChatGPT. But this fun personal project is something I’d like to share with you in the case you find it a fun and useful alternative to the slimier versions I’ve found that seem to always be selling you something after you’ve done your odds conversions.
Happy betting. Do it safely.
Pinnacle’s glossary is one I recommend to get you started.
The code to recreate the app, which was made with Streamlit, can be found on my Github. The Jupyter Notebook to recreate the graphic in Python above can be found here as well.