Optimove says 84% of NFL bettors wagered live in 2025/2026

• 84% of NFL bettors in the 2025/2026 season placed a live wager at some point in the season
• Optimove Insights has now focused on providing information about what it projects would be the betting behavior in 2026/2027
• In the meantime, the AGA has warned about the growing threat from prediction markets

A new report by Optimove Insights has sought to gauge NFL betting activity and specifically what bettors’ preferred markets were. According to the survey, 84% of all people who gambled on the 2025/2026 season placed a live wager, on top of any other market explored.

Optimove provides detailed breakdown of bettors' behavior and motivators

With the season due to kick off at Lumen Field in Seattle, featuring the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots, who previously faced each other in the Super Bowl, the new season should generate strong betting activity.

The report similarly focused on exploring trends for gamblers heading into the 2026/2027 season at a pivotal time for the sport - the threat of prediction markets has grown more real by the day, prompting the American Gaming Association to accuse the sector of the NFL’s flat betting revenue year over year.

Commenting on the betting activity and why it matters to sportsbooks, Optimove CEO Pini Yakuel said:

"Intentions collected in August describe a starting position, not a season. By week eleven, a bettor’s team may be eliminated from contention; they may be making live bets, and their weekly budget may already be spent. The sportsbook still needs the real-time insights to know which of those is true."

Optimove argued that 81% of bettors had a fixed budget, but how the money was managed differed. Most people ended up budgeting weekly, while others had a cap on total spend, with 17% reporting that they had not thought about a specific budget per se.

According to Optimove 33% of NFL bettors expect to spend around $250, with another 31% spending $500 or more, and then 26% around $100.

Optimove Insights now estimates that 41% of pre-game wagers have been placed by bettors leading up to the first games, with live betting a close second. NFL bettors are driven by several specific aspects of the experience, to name emotional attachment to a team, player performance, and team loyalty.

The company argues that bettors’ behavior for the NFL is not necessarily founded in detailed and careful analysis of performance.

Fans are loyal, but they love betting on the NFL even more

Rather, it has to do with an inherent attachment to a specific squad, and the company even gauged how this looks in percentages. NFL bettors were motivated by:

• Football player performance (45%)
• Team loyalty (43%)
• Excitement to watch (43%)

But just because you are loyal doesn’t mean you have to stop betting if your team is ousted from the event, as attested by the report. 78% of respondents confirmed that they have every intention to keep going and wager on games even if their own teams were eliminated.

In terms of which wager types got the most interest, point spreads (59%) lead the way, followed by moneylines (57%), as well as totals (43%) and parlays (29%).

However, what people could agree on was that the more complicated an app was, the less likely they were to use it - with 36% of respondents saying that they would stop betting through an app that didn’t feel intuitive.

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