Why March Madness betting rivals Super Bowl

[clevfan]

Fri, Mar. 12, 2010


Why March Madness betting rivals Super Bowl

Bill Ordine
Philly.com

The Super Bowl may be the king of sports wagering, but March Madness is a worthy heir apparent.

By gaming industry measures, the NCAA men's college basketball tournament is closing in on the NFL's marquee event as a betting proposition, and in less measurable ways, such as office pools, the Big Dance may have eclipsed the Big Game.

Authorities in Nevada don't break down wagering on the championship tournament the way they do for the Super Bowl, but Jay Rood, who runs the sports and race book operations for MGM Mirage casinos in Las Vegas, has crunched the numbers.

Rood estimates that wagering across Nevada for the opening weekend of the tournament, beginning Thursday, will be in the $75 million to $80 million range. This year's Super Bowl wagering was $82.7 million, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

"It's right there neck and neck with the Super Bowl," Rood said. "And it's better for us in some ways because on the first weekend, you're talking about 48 games where the betting is spread, as compared to the Super Bowl, which is one gigantic decision."

In other words, there's less chance the bookmakers get hammered by an outcome that goes against them.

Vegas comes alive for the opening of March Madness; the tournament draws a decidedly younger crowd that has dozens of games on which to wager, from morning to night, for four days.

"The Super Bowl attracts couples and women, young and old," said Jay Kornegay, who runs the sports and race book at the Las Vegas Hilton. "March Madness really grabs the attention of males in their 20s and 30s. It's really a guys' weekend."

Hence the revelry casinos have lined up. Kornegay will have the 1,500-seat Hilton Theater outfitted with five 12-by-15-foot video screens, and admission will be free. Stadium food and drinks will be on sale, and betting windows will be just outside so customers can catch every jump shot.

The Stratosphere casino is doing something similar this year. The showroom, which normally features superstar impersonators and topless vampires, will be transformed into March BBall Playoff HQ, with nine big screens, a couple of betting stations, and even a few blackjack tables where the Double Down Girls do the dealing. Again, admission will be free.

March Madness parties in Vegas are a departure from the Super Bowl, for which the NFL has put the kibosh on big casino events tied to the game with threats of legal action. But it appears that the gaming industry and the NCAA have reached a certain level of detente.

For instance, in recent years the NCAA has sent observers to Vegas sports books during the tournament to learn more about how bricks-and-mortar and even offshore sports gambling operations work, including how betting trends are tracked. There has been a freer exchange of information between the sides; an annual summit is held among stakeholders, and at least the MGM Mirage casinos have stopped posting prop bets on individual players - say, on how many points a specific Kentucky player will score.

"We come at this issue certainly from different points of view," NCAA spokeswoman Stacey Osburn said, "but we both want the same thing: to protect the integrity of the game."

From a historical perspective, bookmaker Rood pointed to the wire-to-wire televising of the tournament as key to the Big Dance's rise as a wagering event.

Central Michigan University professor Tim Otteman - who has researched, has written about, and lectures on sports gaming - also pointed to the 1979 championship game between Larry Bird's Indiana State and Magic Johnson's Michigan State as key in piquing broader interest, and the expansion of the field to 64 teams in 1985.

In fact, it is the design of the 64-team bracket that encourages the seemingly ubiquitous NCAA office pool.

"It attracts people who never gamble . . . and it happens in a more social environment," Otteman said.

And you don't have to know a thing about college basketball's arcane RPI rankings if all you want to do is fill out a bracket based on team colors or mascots.

In the MGM Mirage's futures odds this week, favorites to win the championship were Kansas (9-5), Kentucky (2-1), and Syracuse (11-5). Bettors who got in on the Orange when the line opened in May got those betting tickets at 45-1. Among local teams, Villanova was 8-1 (after starting 35-1 in May) and Temple 100-1.

Casino sharpshooters. The Trump Plaza in Atlantic City is running a promotion that coincides with the Atlantic Ten tournament being held at Boardwalk Hall.

Today and tomorrow, patrons playing slots and table game will be randomly chosen to play pop-a-shot, an arcade version of free-throw shooting. Three players will be picked every 10 minutes to shoot for one minute. Every player chosen is guaranteed 250 bonus slots dollars (to be used in a slot machine), but there's also a scoring element to the game, and those shooters with the highest pop-a-shot totals get to share in 10,000 bonus slot dollars.

Orel knocked out early. Last week, we mentioned that former major-league pitcher Orel Hershiser had become a somewhat accomplished poker player and was competing in the NBC National Heads-up Poker Championship, whose format mimics the NCAA basketball tournament. Last weekend, 64 players faced off in one-on-one single-eliminations, with the final two in a best-of-three showdown.

Among a celebrity-studded field at Caesars Palace, Annie Duke pocketed the $500,000 first prize by beating Eric Seidel, a winner of eight World Series of Poker bracelets, two games to one.

Hershiser, who advanced to the quarterfinals as a rookie in 2008, this time didn't make it out of the first round, when he was dispatched by 21-year-old Annette Obrestad, a Norwegian prodigy who is reputed to have started her career online when she was 15. Two rounds later, Obrestad was eliminated by 76-year-old poker patriarch Doyle Brunson. The tournament will be televised on NBC10 starting April 18 and air over six consecutive Sundays.