Sports betting during this year’s March Madness might break records as more states legalize wagers on the most-anticipated tournaments in college basketball.
Adults will legally bet some $2.72 billion on the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments, which started Thursday and will run through early April, according to an estimate by the American Gaming Association. That figure does not even count wagers that were made outside of legal bookmakers, which are massive.
As sports betting becomes legal in more states every year, March Madness has been beating its previous records, and experts say that is likely again for the 2024 tournaments.
“I think it’s a pretty reasonable expectation that this year will produce record amounts of legal wagering,” Geoff Zochodne, a sports betting industry expert for Covers, told the Washington Examiner.
Zochodne, who said this year will “probably be the biggest March Madness ever” in terms of legal wagering, noted that more states have come on board and legalized betting since last year’s tournaments.
The transition toward legal sports betting began in 2018, when the Supreme Court ruled that a 1992 law prohibiting the activity was unconstitutional. That landmark decision paved the way for states to legalize sports betting, and, each year, more states have begun offering residents the opportunity to place legal bets.
For instance, Kentucky now has an online legal marketplace for sports betting, and North Carolina also recently opened up to online sports betting. With a combined six teams in the tournament, fans are sure to shell out money betting in the two states.
North Carolina has three teams in the March Madness men’s tournament this year: No. 1 seed North Carolina, No. 4 seed Duke, and No. 11 seed North Carolina State. Kentucky also has three teams competing: No. 3 seed Kentucky, No. 14 seed Morehead State, and No. 15 seed Western Kentucky.
Johnny Avello, the director of race and sportsbook operations for betting giant DraftKings, is also expecting a banner year for sports betting during March Madness.
“This is the biggest annual event of any given year for us because — people say the Super Bowl is bigger? Well, it’s not,” Avello said during an interview with the Washington Examiner. “This takes place over a three-week period.”
In fact, the two NCAA tournaments are expected to rake in nearly double the estimated $1.4 billion in legal bets on this year’s Super Bowl, according to the AGA’s estimates.
Avello pointed out that, unlike events such as the Super Bowl or other major championship games, March Madness has a huge number of opportunities to bet over an extended period of time. He also said the names associated with the basketball tournaments themselves naturally lend themselves to gambling.
“I think with the NCAA using these terminologies, Sweet 16, Elite Eight, Final Four, I think that creates individual betting events, so it’s like each one of these is an overall event,” Avello explained.
DraftKings has also put up a wider variety of betting options for March Madness this year in order to satiate the red-hot demand, according to Avello. For instance, gamblers can make prop bets, such as on which team will score 10 points first in a game.
While the sports betting world won’t know whether this year will break the previous March Madness betting record until a champion is crowned on April 8, Avello said he expects it will.
This year is also unique in that the women’s NCAA tournament is getting more attention and drawing more wagers. That’s in part because of the star power of female players such as Caitlin Clark of Iowa and Angel Reese of LSU.
Betting on women’s basketball is over 12 times higher than last year, Avello noted.
Kirk Wakefield, a professor and Baylor University’s executive director of the Center for Sports Strategy and Sales program, told the Washington Examiner that in general, since the time of the pandemic, overall attention to sports and engagement with fans has been growing.
“The media ratings for the NFL and other sports keep going up,” he said. “Betting and other activities parallel fan passion, fan passion is up, so guess what, sports betting is up.”
Wakefield said that when people get engaged in sports betting, they also follow sports, such as the basketball tournaments, more closely.
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Regardless of how the final numbers shake out, one thing is certain among those in the sports industry: This year’s tournaments will feature a massive number of bets and a massive amount of money changing hands.
“It’s pretty reasonable to expect you’re going to see a considerable increase in legal wagering on March Madness,” Zochodne said. “The illegal side, it’s hard to put a number on it and to really wrap your arms around that because people aren’t necessarily reporting how much they bet illegally on something.”