March Madness climaxed in Minneapolis on Monday night with the No 1 seed and New Jersey sportsbook favorite Virginia Cavaliers triumphant.
Virginia beat Texas Tech 85-77 in an overtime thriller to win their first-ever NCAA Basketball championship.
They also earned themselves great redemption as they shrugged away the embarrassment they suffered in last year’s championship. This was when they became the first No 1 seed in history to lose an NCAA game to a No 16 seed.
Monday night’s game was as tight and as close as New Jersey’s bookmakers expected to be.
Hours before it began, the Red Raiders were closing in but all thirteen NJ Sportsbooks still had the Cavaliers as their favorites. The money line odds on Virginia at this stage were around -120 as opposed to the evens (+100) being offered on Texas Tech.
March Madness has traditionally been one of America’s greatest sports betting phenomena, even when it was illegal outside of Nevada. Many thousands of offices around the country were running informal Bracket Betting games.
March Madness betting legal in New Jersey for first time
Since May last year, sports-betting has been legal, however. Sportsbook crusader New Jersey and seven other States were thus able to offer March Madness wagers for the first time ever.
Ahead of Monday’s nights NCAA final, the American Gaming Association (AGA) published some interesting findings. They came from a recent survey that tracked March Madness wagering patterns heading into the Final Four.
The ACA found that of the 47 million Americans who had placed bets, only 10% still had teams in play.
Out of that figure, 5% cent favored Virginia and 4% backed Michigan State. Only1% had bet on Texas Tech and just 0.009% on Auburn University.
Interestingly, each of these Final Four states along with Monday host Minnesota currently has sports betting legislation on the go.
Furthermore, nearly 6-in-10 Americans said they’d have found Final Four games better TV entertainment had they bet on a team.
Ahead of the start of March Madness, AGA research found that punters most favored Duke to win the NCAA Championship. They were followed by Gonzaga, North Carolina, Kentucky and only then Virginia, the eventual winners.