Four sports betting storylines to follow
From mobile betting coming soon in North Carolina to Minnesota's ridiculous ATS season
It’s a relatively slow time in the sports calendar, as we’re now past the Super Bowl but not yet into college basketball conference tournaments and March Madness. While the sports betting world never sleeps, it’s a good opportunity to present a few storylines that have caught my attention over the past few weeks.
Some of them are directly related to a sport, and some of them are a little more macro and hopefully are interesting to you as a bettor — or just someone wanting to be more knowledgeable in the sports betting space.
Here are four sports betting storylines that caught my eye recently:
What’s going on with UNDERs in the NBA?
Since the NBA All-Star Break, UNDERs in the NBA are a remarkable 38-12-1 (76%). And that includes going 6-6 last Thursday — the first day after the break — making them a scorching 32-6-1 (84%) since last Friday.
Is this due to something tangible like teams playing better defense in the stretch run? Bad teams getting worse to jockey for lottery position? It’s hard to know right now, but bookmakers aren’t changing their approach just yet.
“I would chalk it up to variance at this point more than any one thing,” Thomas Gable, sportsbook director at The Borgata in New Jersey texted me.
I would never recommend blindly betting something like this, but it’s worth keeping an eye, especially if games may be adjusted downward at some point and there could instead be additional value on OVERs.
Here are the six best OVER teams in the NBA:
OKC Thunder 32-23-3
Philadelphia 76ers 32-26
Indiana Pacers 32-26-2
Utah Jazz 32-26-1
Chicago Bulls 31-26-1
Atlanta Hawks 21-26-1
Mobile sports betting coming to North Carolina
Sports betting has been legal in North Carolina since June 2023, but the all-important mobile betting launch is coming March 11 — just in time for March Madness. Maybe you’re more well versed in U.S. state populations and demographics than I am, but I had no idea that North Carolina was the ninth-biggest U.S. state by population.
That represents a huge opportunity and could turn North Carolina into a Top-10 betting market by handle — especially when considering that it borders two states (Georgia and South Carolina) without sports betting, so people close to the border could drive into the state to place wagers.
The terrific website Legal Sports Report estimated that North Carolina could take in $7 billion in sports betting wagers in its first year and $600 million in gross revenue ($65 million in tax revenue), which would make it a top-five U.S. sports betting market. The usual major sportsbooks (DraftKings, FanDuel, Fanatics, Caesars, BetMGM, ESPN BET) will be launching there, along with Underdog Sports, which plans to launch its sports betting product.
Certainly one worth keeping an eye on.
Sports betting not coming to California soon
While North Carolina is in the finishing sprint to legalization, California hasn’t really gotten out of the starting blocks. Two ballot initiatives — Prop 26 (supported by many of California's Native American tribal governments) and Prop 27 (supported by DraftKings, FanDuel) — both didn’t come close to passing in 2022. Over $450 million was spent on factions supporting and opposing both ballot measures, making it the most expensive ballot measure fight in U.S. history.
With no ballot measures on tap this year, the next potential opportunity for legalization in California is 2026 — which would mean it wouldn’t be operational until 2027.
I wrote a longer piece about this for USA Today’s Bet For The Win section, but the short version is that FanDuel president Christian Genetski sat on a panel last week at the Western Indian Gaming Conference (sponsored by FanDuel) and offered up both an apology for how 2022 played out, as well as a view on the future on legalization in the state.
“Will [legalization] happen by 2026? Well, it’s the first time it can happen,” Genetski said. “I can go on record that it’s not happening before that. But whether it’s 2026, 2028 or 2030, we’ll know when we know.”
While the conference seems like a good first step in mending relations, it sounds like we’ll be waiting a bit for the biggest state in the U.S. to legalize sports betting.
The Minnesota Golden Gophers are covering (almost) every spread
If you haven’t been paying attention to Minnesota’s college basketball team this season (and I can’t think of too many reasons why you would be following a middle-of-the-pack Big Ten title), you may have missed the Golden Gophers’ incredible betting season so far.
Minnesota is 23-4 against the spread this season entering Wednesday night’s game at Illinois. The Golden Gophers are 11-point underdogs tonight at DraftKings and 80% of the bets at DraftKings are on the Fighting Illini.
Minnesota is a crazy 17-1 ATS at home, but only 6-2 ATS on the road (and the Gophers are 0-1 ATS in their only neutral site game this season).