Call it the calm before the storm. Action has been quiet on the NCAA basketball tournament Monday and Tuesday, but that’s about to change.
“Most of the early money is smart money. The public will come in the day of the game,” said Spiro, the top man at Olympic sportsbook in Jamaica.
Make no mistake; recreational gamblers drive the betting handle when it comes to the NCAA tournament not wise guys. It’s especially so this year with Billy Walters’ betting group apparently not doing much, if any, early tournament wagering, according to several sources.
Bracket • March Madness
“When they’re not playing you don’t see the numbers move as much,” one professional gambler said about Walters’ big-time syndicate. “So much of the market is them playing their games and movement of their games creating action for other people. So when they’re not in, the number doesn’t tend to move.”
Another strong betting group nicknamed the “Pokers” because world-class poker players are involved, doesn’t usually bet college basketball, according to the professional gambling source.
Bookmakers need not worry about handle, though. While professional bettors will pick and choose their games, being especially mindful of line movement that could produce value on underdogs, it’s the recreational crowd that make this a big volume event and profitable for the bookmaker.
“Absolutely,” Spiro said when asked if the books win each year on the NCAA tournament. “This is a very good time for the books. There’s a lot of action and a lot of upsets.”
Heavy volume, favorites failing to cover and a future book that pays off on only the winning team are all pluses for the house during the NCAA tournament not to mention, of course, the traditional 11-to-10 bookmaker’s juice.
“During the regular season in college basketball the public will bet a TV game,” Spiro said. “They (the public) aren’t a big influence. Now they are. They’ll set their eyes on a game and they’ll all come in. You don’t see that during the regular season. It’s like the Super Bowl. Once they get involved in a game, they outweigh any wise guy.”
Rob Gillespie, president of BoDog Sportsbook in Costa Rica, agrees.
“I would guess 90-95 percent of our action comes from recreational players,” he said. “March Madness does bring a lot of novice bettors into the market, but not as many as football season.”
Wise guys aren’t just handicapping the NCAA tournament. They realize good betting situations develop, too, in the NIT. But if a number on an NCAA tournament game begins to run away, with the public perhaps hammering a public favorite, a professional gambler will look to step in and grab the ‘dog near post with a big wager giving the bookmaker his two-way action.
“In the NCAA tournament many amateur bettors enter the betting world for the first time all season,” said professional handicapper Ted Sevransky. “These square bettors tend to back popular favorites, and generally don’t know a lot about the schools from the smaller conferences.
“Professional gamblers gain added line value when they bet against the square money, and they are far more knowledgeable about the smaller conference schools, giving them an edge in analyzing the matchups.”
Because the tournament is spread across three weeks, betting handle surpasses the Super Bowl as the most widely wagered annual sporting event in North World Wide-Tele Sports, for example, expects to receive $30 million in bets.
Ken White, chief operating officer and head linesmaker for Las Vegas Sports Consultants, estimates Nevada sportsbooks handled more than $100 million in wagers on the tournament the past two years. More than $80 million was bet statewide on this past Super Bowl, according to figures released by the Nevada Gaming Control Board. The Board does not tabulate figures on the NCAA tournament. Internet betting far exceeds that total.
“It’s way more on the tournament than the Super Bowl,” BoDog’s Gillespie said. “We booked more college basketball bets in February than any other sport in any other month in our history. We booked 20 percent more than the NFL in November, the previous high, and we typically do 50 percent more college basketball business in March than February.”
For bookmakers, the quiet is now over. Tournament time is here. Start firing.
Nobody is wired more into the sports betting scene than Stephen Nover. Nover has been covering sports gaming in Las Vegas since 1984, and has been the premier offshore analyst since 2000. Stephen's industry articles can be found on Covers Gaming. His Guaranteed Picks can be found at Covers Experts.