NCAA Tournament Vegas Handle

Some excerpts from an article about the NCAA Tournament handle in Las Vegas this year... (original article)

“This year the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament for us dwarfed the Super Bowl in terms of our network handle,” said Todd Fuhrman, senior sportsbook analyst for Caesars.

The sportsbook at the MGM Mirage reported a 40 percent increase in bets on the opening Thursday of the tournament compared to last season.

The Nevada Gaming Control doesn’t track betting numbers on the NCAA tournament alone. It lumps the NBA in with college basketball on its monthly revenue reports. But industry officials estimate the NCAA tournament accounts for 70 percent of all basketball wagers in March.

Last March, Nevada sportsbooks took $137.5 million in basketball wagers. Nevada sportsbooks took $93.8 million in Super Bowl bets this year.

Fuhrman said there’s a good chance his book will have taken more bets on Colorado State-Murray State—the first game to tip on the opening Thursday—than it will on either of Saturday’s [Final Four] games.

“The opening weekend, far and away, is the busiest we’ll be for any four-day stretch throughout the entire year,” said Fuhrman. “The Sweet 16 and Elite 8 start to subside quite a bit, and then the Final Four and national championship, as far as Vegas is concerned, is pretty anti-climatic.”

Fuhrman added that college basketball’s national championship game is one of the lowest bet championship games of any sport.

Kentucky is an 8.5-point favorite over Louisville. That’s the largest point spread for a Final Four game since 1999, when Duke was favored by 11 over Michigan State.

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