Research Note #2 · Published 2026-07-16
Where the Juice Hides
An MLB book-by-book vig audit. 1,210 games. 11 US-facing books. Every close on 3 markets. The chart tells one story. The tables tell a subtler one.
Methodology
Sample: 1,210 MLB games from 2026-03-26 through 2026-07-12. 11 US-facing books (three sharp offshore books plus the eight retail books that consistently priced all three markets). 79,600 individual (book × market × phase) juice observations.
Juice formula: (1 / home_implied + 1 / away_implied − 1) × 100% on the two-way close. For run line and total, the same formula applies to each side's own quote (home vs away for spread, Over vs Under for total). We take the per-book, per-market median across the season to smooth outliers.
Data source: daily morning-line and closing-line snapshots from TheOddsAPI, cached in the TDL pipeline (opens ~7:25 AM ET, closes ~1 minute before commence). Reproduction script is public at pipelines/mlb/analysis/book_juice_2026.py.
Moneyline (h2h) — cheapest to most expensive at close
| Rank | Book | Median close juice |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | LowVig | 2.42% |
| 2 | BetOnline | 2.43% |
| 3 | BetUS | 2.49% |
| 4 | MyBookie | 4.00% |
| 5 | FanDuel | 4.05% |
| 6 | Caesars | 4.28% |
| 7 | Bovada | 4.49% |
| 8 | Fanatics | 4.63% |
| 9 | BetMGM | 4.63% |
| 10 | DraftKings | 4.66% |
| 11 | BetRivers | 5.34% |
Sharp tier at ~2.4%, retail middle at ~4.6%, BetRivers alone at 5.34%. Cheapest ML book charges roughly half what BetRivers does — before you've made a single pick.
Run line (spread)
| Rank | Book | Median close juice |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | LowVig | 3.02% |
| 2 | BetOnline | 3.32% |
| 3 | BetUS | 3.40% |
| 4 | Bovada | 3.78% |
| 5 | Caesars | 4.12% |
| 6 | FanDuel | 4.55% |
| 7 | Fanatics | 4.56% |
| 8 | MyBookie | 4.58% |
| 9 | BetMGM | 4.58% |
| 10 | DraftKings | 4.64% |
| 11 | BetRivers | 5.33% |
Bovada and Caesars flip the pattern — cheaper on spreads than on moneyline. Everyone else charges more juice on run line than they do on h2h.
Total (over/under)
| Rank | Book | Median close juice |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | LowVig | 3.48% |
| 2 | BetUS | 4.71% |
| 3 | Bovada | 4.71% |
| 4 | Caesars | 4.71% |
| 5 | Fanatics | 4.71% |
| 6 | BetMGM | 4.71% |
| 7 | BetOnline | 4.72% |
| 8 | DraftKings | 4.72% |
| 9 | FanDuel | 4.76% |
| 10 | MyBookie | 5.00% |
| 11 | BetRivers | 5.60% |
Every retail book clusters at 4.71–4.76% total juice. Seven books within 0.05pp of each other — the closest thing to cartel-like pricing you'll see in this data. Only LowVig undercuts.
The finding you don't hear about: juice is static open → close
Sharp money is supposed to tighten the market. It does — but not in the way most bettors assume. The line moves. The juice does not.
| Book | Open (h2h) | Close (h2h) | Δ (pp) |
|---|---|---|---|
| LowVig | 2.44% | 2.42% | +0.02 |
| BetOnline | 2.44% | 2.43% | +0.01 |
| BetUS | 2.52% | 2.49% | +0.03 |
| Bovada | 4.46% | 4.49% | -0.03 |
| Caesars | 4.28% | 4.28% | +0.00 |
| FanDuel | 4.08% | 4.05% | +0.03 |
| MyBookie | 4.01% | 4.00% | +0.01 |
| Fanatics | 4.63% | 4.63% | +0.00 |
| BetMGM | 4.64% | 4.63% | +0.01 |
| DraftKings | 4.64% | 4.66% | -0.02 |
| BetRivers | 5.33% | 5.34% | -0.01 |
Every book on this list tightens by less than 0.05 percentage points from morning open to closing snapshot. That's noise, not signal. Whatever sharp money is doing to your book's number, it isn't changing what your book charges you to bet it.
Sharp money moves the line. It doesn't move the juice. That's a fixed cost your book charges every day, and it's the difference between a break-even bettor and a losing one — before the pick is even made.
Takeaway
One book on this list — BetRivers — is the worst on every market we measured. 5.34% on moneyline, 5.33% on run line, 5.60% on totals. If you play $500 of MLB volume a month there and move it to LowVig, you save roughly $140/month in vig alone. That's before you've gotten smarter about a single pick.
The bettor's job isn't just to find the right side. It's to find the right side at the right price at the right book. The chart at the top of this page tells you where that starts.
Reproducible: pipelines/mlb/analysis/book_juice_2026.py • Raw data: pipelines/mlb/analysis/book_juice_2026_raw.csv