The action is the bettors, Billy Joe Jim Bob and his cronies. I don't know who "the people who make money doing this" is in your scenario but if it's anything other than the house you're mistaken. The house sets the opening line based on a plethora of data but the overriding goal is to get equal money bet on both teams. If they do that perfectly the loser's money pays off the winners and the house pockets the "vig" or "juice" which is the extra amount you have to put up to bet. For example when you bet $100 dollars you might win $90. The other $10 is their vig or juice or profit. Many people assume if the opening line is VT -4.5 that means the house thinks VT should win by 4.5. Nope. What it means is the house thinks it needs to incentivize WVU fans to bet by giving them points to equal the money VT fans are going to bet. Don't assume it's about the quality of the teams. What if the house knows through their data that on any given Sat. VT fans bet $10M on their game and us poor hillbillies only bet $1M on our game. The house doesn't want that disparity in our game together because if the VT bettors win there isn't enough WVU money to pay them. So, again they set the line based on a plethora of data. Now once the betting starts what happens if some fatcat VT fan bets $15M on the game. They know they'll never get that kind of action from WVU fans so they start moving the line until it's so enticing to WVU fans that the WVU action catches up. They don't really care which team is better, they care how much money will be bet by each side.


[Post edited by MountaineerLegion at 07/08/2017 11:21PM]