Trophy Cases
Ravens, 49ers, Chiefs, Lions set to make theirs in AFC, NFC championship games
Here you are. Staring at that futures bet you made on a conference champion back in August, either on your couch or in an exuberant moment with the crew in a sportsbook somewhere.
Is that little throwaway wager on the Lions about to turn into taxable income?
Is Lamar Jackson going to pull this off?
Maybe the 49ers are inevitable. That’s boring. And certainly not the hope of sportsbook executives out there who’ve watched bets roll in on the perennial NFC runners-up all season.
One of our favorite weekly correspondence comes from bet365, whose betting analyses often read like war correspondence.
From this week:
“Conference Championship Outcomes?
BAL and DET are the best runners for us, so that SB matchup [is] obviously the best outcome. KC is a better result than SF, with SF obviously being the worst scenario. However, with the teams that are now out, namely BUF, and the odds we are now laying BAL at, now +180, the scenario today may differ come Sunday as BAL is very popular along with SF now … So it may be that KC v DET is the ideal SB matchup.
AFC Championship Action
50/50 so far of all tickets, with more invested of those in BAL by about 60%-40%. But this line also went to BAL, where the early ML action was more towards KC. It’s now 60%-40% to BAL with the total about 85%-15% to the over 44.5..most expect a shootout here based on that action.”
View more NFL betting trends from writer Dave Bontempo and DraftKings’ director of operations, Johnny Avello.
AP photos; Brant James illustrations
Stats Aren’t Lion
Per John Ewing of BetMGM
Aiyuk or LaPorta for Anytime Scorer?
Well, Christian McCaffrey, of course, but here’s Gaming Today’s NFC title game anytime primer from DJ Corrigan.
You will not find many better tight ends in the league than Sam LaPorta. The rookie out of Iowa put up a historic season, leading all tight ends in touchdown catches (10) and ranking in the top five in receptions (86), targets (120), yards (889), and 20+ yard receptions (15).
LaPorta’s regular season success has translated to the playoffs, as he has 12 catches and a touchdown through two games despite dealing with a lingering knee injury. This will be the toughest challenge the Lions have faced in the postseason, but LaPorta should still have plenty of scoring opportunities.
And What About Jackson and Pacheco?
Here’s the AFC ATTD analysis from Tyler Everett.
Chiefs RB Isiah Pacheco offers as much value as any player in this game in ATTD markets. The second-year player has become a major cog in this offense thanks to the Chiefs’ lack of talent at wide receiver. Pacheco iced last week’s game against Buffalo, and he’s had at least 15 carries in all but one game dating back to Nov. 5.
With seven total touchdowns (six rushing, one receiving) and at least one in each of the Chiefs’ last six games, Pacheco is a great play to find the end zone again on Sunday in Baltimore.
March 11 Madness in North Carolina
A hotbed of college basketball history and fervor will have mobile sports betting in time for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
North Carolina officials announced on Wednesday that legal wagering would commence on March 11.
The tournament begins on March 19 with the First Four. On March 21, the Spectrum Center in Charlotte will begin its stint as a first- and second-round venue and, at the same time, as a makeshift sportsbook with scores of attendees betting on their phones.
Savvy Bettors, NFL Favorites Had the Suits Explaining Why Revenue Dropped
A small set of NFL games was key in the US legal sports betting industry, posting a poultry paltry revenue total in November.
According to the Gaming Today sports betting revenue tracker, $871,244,015 was taken by legal sportsbooks in the United States during the month, down 29% from October. This while a record $13,479,237,954 was wagered in legal sportsbooks in November, up from $12,802,131,373 in October.
ESPN BET Boosts Exchanges
The World Wide Wager-er created an arbitrage event last weekend with an odds boost of +110 for the Ravens to win by 10-plus points or at +140 for 11-plus. The apparently high-limit promotion created a record number of Texans tickets seeking matches on betting exchanges. (First reported by David Purdum, ESPN)
David Huffmann of Sporttrade explains on his LinkedIn page:
“Yesterday was a crazy day in sports betting. I woke up to texts that ESPN Bet was offering a seemingly uncapped promotion on Baltimore to win by more than 10 points: +110 (47.6% probability). This was a bet widely offered at -110 (52.3%) everywhere else.
The Sporttrade team got together and decided we could offer the other side of the market (HOU +9.5 points) at a price that would allow an arbitrage.
ST: Houston +9.5 @ +100 (50% probability)
ESPN: Baltimore -9.5 @ +110 (47.6% probability)
For every $97.6 bet covering both sides ($50 on HOU + $47.6 on BAL; both returning $100), a customer would earn out $2.4 of risk-free money. This is known as arbitrage, something widely done by many over the last few years, but we've never seen something so big and so uncapped as this promo with no limits.
New & existing customers flooded to their Sporttrade deposit page's to plug in as much money as humanly possible to maximize this promotion leading to quite a crazy day. This lead to a bit of an internal fire drill, but turned out to be a quite a fun day after the Ravens covered 9.5!”
Oddsmakers contend that coaches don’t move the needle much from their side of the transaction, a point we’ve discussed in this space before. But it will be interesting to see how the hire of Jim Harbaugh as head coach of the LA Chargers impacts futures markets.
The Chargers gig was long prognosticated as his ideal landing spot with under-coached-up quarterback Justin Herbert and some other young and talented pieces on the roster.
Overnight at DraftKings, the Chargers’ odds to win Super Bowl 59 slid from +3000 to +2500.
That’s right where they began before an eventual 5-12 season that cost Brandon Staley his job as head coach.
And what of those poor, rudderless, defending national champion Wolverines? Using BetMGM as the filter, Michigan opened at +900 to win the 2024 national championship and remained at that number on Thursday.
Meanwhile … Bill Belichick
Betr With Friends
Betr, which currently offers sports betting in just Ohio, Massachusetts, and Virginia with a beta product, announced this week it had secured market-access deals to offer online sportsbook and casino in Pennsylvania and for online sportsbooks in Colorado and Kentucky.
In a press release, the company notable for co-founder and figurehead Jake Paul claimed it had already “secured market access in Indiana, has applied for a sports wagering license in Maryland.”
Tom Brady: BetMGM Company Man Now
The sportsbook will deploy the six-time Super Bowl winner, actor Vince Vaughn and Wayne Gretzky, who also played sports, to kindly ask for your patronage during the Super Bowl.
Odds …
…. Ends
The Pegasus World Cup runs this weekend at Gulfstream Park. It’s sort of a Breeders Cup in miniature. I attended last year, and these were the notable events:
Jesus, it was cold.
My wife wanted to bet on one race, so she picked a horse with a cute name, and it finished second. So she threw away the ticket even though I said to hold onto it. Then the winner was placed lower for an infraction, and I was salty for a while.
I rode an elevator with Dave Portnoy, and he was trying too hard to be aloof.
Then I checked out the Gaming Today horse racing page.
Moving on:
By Brant James, Gaming Today Senior Writer
Call 1-800-GAMBLER if you have a gambling problem. 21+: All content herein is intended for audiences 21+.