Unit

In sports betting, a “unit” is a measurement of the size of a punter’s bet. Each bettor has a different bankroll, so it enables everyone to show their profit in universal terms, without using the dollar value. This is especially important when dealing with sports betting bankroll management strategies – in most cases, you should be betting between 1% and 5% of your entire bankroll on each wager.

It is generally accepted that a single unit is equal to 1% of your bankroll unless stated otherwise, however please note that since this assumption is extremely informal you should always try to infer what a person means by a single unit from the context.

Usage Example

“Mark is doing well this year, he’s been 25 units ahead in July, and he still has five months to go.”

Trivia

Numerous sports handicappers tend to release their plays with units instead of specific currency values. 1-3 unit plays are considered average, while 4, 5, 6 and 7 unit plays are rather big and usually indicate that the handicapper feels that they have plenty of value. If you’d like to be conservative with a $1,000 bankroll and a handicapper released a 4 unit play, you’d be risking 4%, or $40, on that play.