Twice weekly, we’ll comb through as many articles, tweets and podcasts as we can find related to the world of sports betting and daily fantasy sports, and publish the good stuff here.
Stumble upon something you think we should include? Email [email protected].
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The Westgate SuperBook posted some lines on the Vegas Golden Knights earlier this week.
Shortly after the NHL announced the schedule of home openers for next season Wednesday morning, the Westgate sports book posted lines on the Golden Knights’ Oct. 6 season opener at the Dallas Stars and Oct. 10 home opener against the Arizona Coyotes.
The Golden Knights are a plus-220 underdog to Dallas (minus-250) and the total is 5½ for the expansion team’s inaugural regular-season game.
The Golden Knights’ game against the Coyotes is a pick’em, with each team listed at minus-105. The total is 5½, with the under a minus-130 favorite.
Westgate sports book manager Ed Salmons made the odds based on the strength of the players available in the expansion draft and the team’s projected roster, with the expectation that Pittsburgh Penguins goalie Marc-Andre Fleury will start in net for Las Vegas’ first major pro sports team.
The Mayweather-McGregor fight has had more early betting action in Nevada than Mayweather-Pacquiao.
Mayweather-McGregor has attracted 3x more bets, 2x the $ in first week @WilliamHillUS than what was bet on Mayweather-Pacquiao in 1st week.
— David Payne Purdum (@DavidPurdum) June 22, 2017
The Las Vegas Sun compiled some celebrity predictions on the fight.
Lennox Lewis, former heavyweight boxing champion. “I can’t take it serious,” he told the Daily Star. “Mayweather is the best in his weight class, no one can touch him in boxing. … He’s just too good at boxing for McGregor and McGregor is too inexperienced at boxing. He can’t use his other styles.”
Ice Cube, actor, rapper and BIG3 co-founder. “Yeah, I know what’s going to happen. I know what’s going to happen,” Cube tells “Undisputed” co-host Shannon Sharpe. “I think Mayweather gonna put them thangs on him.”
A Legal Sports Report article claims that the professional sports leagues share some of the blame in the messy daily fantasy sports legal situation.
There were hot takes flying around the internet yesterday when the Federal Trade Commission announced it would seek to block the merger between daily fantasy sports sites DraftKings and FanDuel.
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban — who is never shy about giving his opinion and has spoken about DFS at length in the past — joined the fray.
Cuban pointed out one of the underlying problems of the DFS industry that led to the merger being blocked. But what Cuban missed in his analysis is that US pro sports leagues — the NBA included — are at least partially responsible for the situation that DFS finds itself in.
A Las Vegas sportsbook manager said there hasn’t been much action on “typical public teams” on regular season win total bets.
The road to redemption has already begun with the release of the 2017 win totals, but as Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook manager Jeff Sherman explains, the public isn’t yet backing its favorite teams.
“We have seen no large bets on typical public teams like the Packers, Steelers and Patriots, which is surprising and we don’t expect that to continue,” he said. “Those teams have huge fan bases and we always see support for them.”
So little action has come in on these three that not a single vig, or price you pay to take a line, of theirs has moved at all from its opening position.