2016-17 NBA Betting: Most Profitable Referees

2016-17 NBA Betting: Most Profitable Referees

At approximately 9:00 AM eastern on game days, the NBA announces the daily referee assignments on their website. For every game, there are three referees. Like with NBA head coaches, bettors must pay attention to the refs because under certain conditions some refs are more profitable than others.

For example, since 2005, home teams have covered just 49% of games, which means that there’s quite a bit of value on road refs. Thus, it’s vital for bettors to know who is officiating, noting the referees on each three-man unit with a similar edge.

One important caveat is that these officiating trends do not carry over into the playoffs as the number of bets noticeably increases due to the influx of casual bettors, which causes oddsmakers to shade their lines accordingly. For the purpose of this post, we solely focused on the regular season.

The following tables display the five most profitable active referees for home teams, visiting teams, overs and unders since the start of the 2005 season.

Best Home Refs

Best Road Refs

Best Over Refs

Best Under Refs

One ref that bettors should pay close attention to is Scott Foster, who is one of two refs who appears in the top-five in more than one category. Currently, he’s the most profitable road ref and the second-most profitable over ref. Despite being a profitable ref for bettors to follow, in an anonymous survey conducted by the Los Angeles Times in January, Foster was voted the worst referee in the NBA by several players and coaches.

Bettors can track the latest odds, public betting trends, injuries and even futures by visiting our free NBA odds page.

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