With all that in mind, let’s quickly look back at what’s happened over the past week in the sports universe and look at what’s ahead on the STN Sports App and at the Station Casinos Race and Sports Books…
Almost Tournament Time
March Madness, the greatest annual tournament in sports, is merely weeks away, and this year’s field is wide open. There is no super team this year. Houston, UCLA, Kansas, Purdue and Tennessee are the favorites to cut down the nets, but none of them have that championship look. This might be the year in which a true Cinderella wins the whole thing.
“With these teams all being so even, when it comes to the Elite Eight you’re going to be in a spot where all the spreads are probably going to be three or four points or less,” Jason Simbal, Race & Sports Director said. “All these teams are so close to one another. I don’t know if there’s really a sleeper because the problem is that nobody is necessarily great. It’s going to be a good tournament because all these teams are jumbled up and so close together.”
Although there’s no dominant college hoops team, bettors are finding their favorites. Arizona and UCLA seem to be getting more attention than a Janet Jackson Super Bowl halftime show. Part of that is based on the team’s proximities to Vegas and also the fact that they often play in the final games of the evening.
“Everybody seems to have parlays kind of feeding into those teams,” Simbal said. Having said that, Duke and North Carolina, two legitimate blue bloods of the sport, are getting very little love from the public these days. The Tar Heels are in danger of not even making the March Madness tournament field — this from a team that was the preseason No. 1 squad and among the favorites to be crowned champion.
“The public gets off these losing teams really quick,” Simbal said. “UNC and Duke have kind of been cast aside and bettors have moved on to Alabama, Tennessee and those types of teams.”
The Ice Guys
Last year, it wasn’t uncommon for top NHL teams to enter a game as 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 favorites. That hasn’t really been case this season… until now. On Tuesday night, for instance, nine hockey games were played, and five of the nine games saw at least 3-to-1 odds.
“A lot of the lousy teams have started to bench their players intentionally because they don’t want them to get them hurt with the trade deadline coming up,” said STN Sports Director Jason Simbal. “So it’s making the bad teams worse. After the trade deadline, the bad teams get even worse than that.”
Even people who bought a new mattress during President’s Day sales aren’t resting like some of these NHL guys. The Vegas Golden Knights, mind you, are not one of the teams sitting players, as they’re leading the Pacific Division and rolling. In fact, their future book odds dropped this week thanks to their winning play (their loss against Chicago notwithstanding, of course).
“Guests have been betting the Knights really heavily,” Simbal added. “We really needed Chicago in that game.” But, with bad teams getting worse, plan your bets accordingly.
Football… Continued
Did you know — and by the looks of the handle, you didn’t — that football is still being played? The third-act of the XFL began this past weekend, but bettors were more turned off than a storm-caused power outage. None of the games saw a tremendous amount of action via pre-kickoff bets or in-play.
“The XFL didn’t even do double the amount of betting than we got on the NBA three-point contest, but listen, it’s new. Let’s give it some time,” Simbal said. The St. Louis BattleHawks began the season as favorites to win the eight- team league, but they’ve since been leapfrogged by the Arlington Renegades (who beat the Vegas Vipers) and Houston Roughnecks (who began the season as the biggest long shot.) If the XFL wants to compete, it needs to bring more heat than the sauna at the Red Rock Spa.
Bets To Know
It’s never too early to talk baseball, even when it’s on-and-off snowing in Vegas. STN Sports has recently added over/under Regular Season Win Totals for Pro Baseball.
Weekly Winners
ICYMI, Wildfire on Fremont had their Fremont Freeroll for the big game, and two winners selected 16 out of 20 prop bets correctly to split a nice (free) $5,000 payday each!
The Fremont Freeroll was a free parlay card with 20 prop bets on the Philly vs. KC Championship game. Congrats to those two winners from the first weekend of Wildfire on Fremont! There were over 240 entries into the contest.