This year’s new college football playoff format hasn’t just pleased fans and ESPN executives, but bettors and bookmakers alike. New Year’s Day saw massive amounts bet on the two semifinal games, which saw the books clean up on an Ohio State upset, offsetting big losses from the Oregon route of Florida State.
Everybody in the business saw it coming too. Long time bookmaker Jimmy Vaccaro, who is currently with the South Point sports book, spoke about how good this football season was, and said, “the interest is through the roof.” Every month saw record amounts bet, including more than $400 million just in November. While most of that came from bets on the NFL, college football contributed their share.
Sure, Monday’s championship game probably won’t generate as much action as the Dallas-Green Bay game from the day before, it will be a fantastic one-two punch for the books. William Hill oddsmaker Nick Bogdanovich is thrilled at what looks to be an extremely busy weekend, where he stated, “and we just came off a six-day run of non-stop action that was huge on football.”
That non-stop action he was referring to included the January 1 bowl games, which were the most heavily bet bowl games in history. While it’s tough to say how exactly the books will fare on the title game, one thing is for certain, in the only state where sports betting is completely legal, football is generating revenue like never before.
According to figures pulled from the Nevada Gaming Control Board, the months of September, October, and November saw over $1.1 billion wagered on football games in Nevada’s 186 sports books, leaving behind a haul of $86 million in profits. In addition to the game itself, proposition bets bring in a whole different form of fun, excitement, and revenue, by diversifying the action.
People can’t get to the betting windows fast enough, with cash firmly clutched in their fists, if only for a moment, to get in on their “sure bets.” Many feel the times are changing, and leading the way with this movement is NBA commissioner Adam Silver, who has openly embraced sports betting.
Vacarro said, “The walls are crumbling. It’s a different era, a different time.” The man should know, as evidenced by his nearly 40 years in the business. He went on to say, “People are starting to understand it’s a huge entertainment value and it’s not wrong to be on the Dallas Cowboys with 40 or 50 bucks. You just end up rooting twice as hard for the team you have money on.”
In 2013, bookmakers had a slim profit of 5.6 percent of the $3.6 billion wagered. When the 2014 figures are all tallied up, that margin is sure to crush the previous year. “The results have favored the bookmaker for sure, but these things go in cycles,” Bogdanovich said. “There may be years when the players do better than the books. So when you get a year like this, you count your blessings and hope things are even better next year.”
