Today marks the official start of March Madness tournament games.\u00a0 Last year was written off because of COVID-19 and this year might make up the difference.\u00a0 Sports gambling is expected to be extremely attractive this time around and, according to some analysts, Illinois is in a particularly good spot to see record revenue from NCAA Men\u2019s Basketball.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Illinois already has a strong sports gambling market, becoming one of only four states in January to surpass $500 million in wagers in a single month.\u00a0 The state\u2019s sportsbooks reported a total handle of $600 million, which also gave Illinois $7.2 million in tax revenue.\u00a0 With March Madness now beginning and sports gamblers warmed up, there\u2019s more action to come and Illinois is expected to see a record-setting $188 million wagered on the tournament\u2019s games.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Part of the reason for the boost is because the Illinois Fighting Illini are in the tournament and are one of the top favorites to win.\u00a0 They are second-highest, according to the odds posted by the William Hill sportsbook, getting +400.\u00a0 This is right behind the Gonzaga Bulldogs and their undefeated record and just above the Baylor Bears.\u00a0 Gonzaga is getting +210, while Baylor is at +500.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Should the Fighting Illini survive the early round and make a deep run in March Madness, the amount wagered in Illinois could go even higher.\u00a0 However, any wagers on the team won\u2019t come from within the state, as Illinois, like 12 other legal states, prohibits gambling on in-state college teams.\u00a0 Some are hoping to see this change, including Joe Boozell of PlayIllinois.com.\u00a0 He explains, \u201cI\u2019m not going to say it will, but there is optimism that it could be changed by next football season which is great, and that means by next year\u2019s March Madness it would be changed.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
A bill is already in the works to remove the restriction, but would allow colleges and universities to have the final decision.\u00a0 Schools that don\u2019t want to have sports wagers placed on their teams would be able to petition the Illinois Gaming Board for exclusion, although the hope is that this wouldn\u2019t happen.\u00a0 Adds Boozell, \u201cIn general, sports books do make money off of March Madness and it’s taxed so the state makes money off of it, so it definitely impacts the consumer but also the operators and the government as well.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Today will see the First Four games of March Madness.\u00a0 Illinois will play in the first round, taking on the Drexel Dragons tomorrow.\u00a0 This probably won\u2019t be one of the games that will see a lot of action, as the Fighting Illini are -10000 favorites to win on a -22.5-point spread.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today marks the official start of March Madness tournament games.\u00a0 Last year was written off because of COVID-19 and this year might make up the difference.\u00a0 Sports gambling is expected to be extremely attractive this time around and, according to some analysts, Illinois is in a particularly good spot to see record revenue from NCAA […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[324],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1162,"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions\/1162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}