With the hundreds of thousands of those loyal sports fans flocking to Las Vegas to cheer on their college team for the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament, and making plenty of wagers in the process, people seem to wonder why it is one can’t bet on a tournament bracket at a sports book. Sure, people can easily bet on an underdog to win a game, or even to win the tournament from the onset, but not an entire bracket.
Jay Rood, VP of Race and Sports at MGM International, gets asked this question quite a bit. His answer is that his company’s sports books simply cannot handle the technological hurdles or logistics of such an enterprise. “Grading the brackets is a nightmare, “ Rood says. “We’re upgrading out system in the fall, and we may be capable of handling more.”
Another issue comes with the fact many people do not arrive in town until the first games have tipped off. Filling out an entire bracket in person would be much more difficult than going online and filling one out on ESPN in a few minutes. Rood said, “Only a small number get in on time.”
That is not to say the possibility of this is completely off the table. A few smaller casinos in Vegas which cater to locals, do a similar version with a round-by-round bracket challenge. Rood said he is contemplating putting a system in place which would pay odds after point totals for each round. If someone guessed 30 of 32 or 31 of 32, they would pay different amounts. For now, those brackets online will have to suffice, but perhaps for not much longer.
