Hundreds of millions of dollars will be bet on the NCAA Tournament over the next three weeks at Las Vegas sportsbooks, most of it coming $25 at a time.
A survey of a dozen current and former Vegas bookmanagers suggests that the most common size of a bet during the opening Thursday and Friday of March Madness is around $25.
Some guys even spring for the $2.50 in juice, but not often. “Anyone betting less than $50 typically plays flat, rather than springing for the juice,” a former bookmaker at Caesars Palace said.
Answers varied from book to book, with $110 being the highest response and $20 the lowest. Nine of 12 responded with answers between $20 and $30. The average size of bets would be somewhat higher than the most common size, survey participants said, because of the handful of bigger bets that are placed. Overall, though, the opening round of the NCAA Tournament is for the guy or gal who rolls into town with $200, elects to bet eight games on Thursday and hopes there is money left over for Friday. And then there are the $5 and $10 parlay bettors.
“It really is hard for bettors not to throw a four-bagger each time a set of four games start,” said Micah Roberts, a former sports book director at Station’s sports books and now an analyst for The Linemakers on Sporting News. “It’s part of what makes the March Madness experience so intense in Las Vegas. As they cheer in their 10-to-1 payout, each shot at the end of their money game is huge.
“Those parlays are why March is the most consistent month on the calendar year that the bean-counters can rely on,” Roberts added. “The other 11 months have no pattern and are impossible to forecast, but March can be banked on consistently, holding 8-10 percent.”
The level of betting sophistication during the opening days of the NCAA Tournament is lower than Super Bowl week, says Jeff Stoneback, assistant manager at the MGM Mirage.
“It seems like everyone follows and bets on the NFL,” said Stoneback. “But, in college basketball, a lot of people don’t even pay attention to it until the tournament. We get a lot of kids in here on spring break. A lot of them don’t know much about even teams like Duke and Kentucky.”
Ed Salmons, a 20-year Vegas veteran and oddsmaker at the LVH SuperBook, compares the betting on the first two days of the NCAA Tournament to the type of action that is placed on Super Bowl prop bets.
“The biggest difference between the two events in terms of the betting,” said Salmons, “is that you’re not going to write as many big tickets on the NCAA Tournament as you do for the Super Bowl.”