A sportsbook is a gambling establishment that accepts wagers on different sports events. It offers a wide variety of betting options, including spread bets and money lines. Most bets are made by laying money on teams with the expectation that they will win, or cover, the point spread. In the long run, this guarantees the sportsbook a profit. However, in the short term, it is a risky proposition for the bettors who place these wagers.

Until recently, many states did not have legal sportsbooks. But this changed when the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act allowed Nevada, Oregon, Montana, and Delaware to allow sports betting. Other than these four states, sports betting was not legal in any other state, and people had to travel to Las Vegas or another place that offered legal sports betting to place a bet.

The way sportsbooks make money is by charging something called vig (vigorish). They collect funds from losing bets and use them to offset winning bets. This is how they stay in business, and it’s important to understand the vig to be a savvy bettor.

In addition to moving handicaps against the spread, sportsbooks also adjust odds in money line bets and move totals in over/under bets and props. The reason for this is to balance action, and often the sportsbook’s edge is small enough that it can move the line and still make a profit. In some cases, the goal of a sportsbook is to tell a larger story with their betting lines: Laura Hildebrand’s Seabiscuit was a portrait of depression-era America; C L R James’s Beyond a Boundary saw cricket as an expression of West Indian cultural identity; Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch rummaged around in the mental storeroom of football fans.