NCAAB March Madness 2011

Betting Against the Public and College Hoops: Updated for NCAA Basketball Tournament (March 2011)

Get ready for the Madness to begin!  We highlighted several of the sports marketplace statistics that we study — and came up with a simple-to-use system that has been profitable over the past few years of March Madness.  There is increased public attention as we near the NCAA Tournament — so Betting Against the Public works particularly well at this time of the college basketball season.  The information on this site is for entertainment and educational purposes only. Use of this information in violation of any federal, state, or local laws is prohibited.

Introduction

As you know, SportsInsights loves taking a contrarian approach to sports betting.  With March Madness right around the corner, we did some digging and came up with the following results for betting against the public during the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.  It is important to note the results only include games played in the month of March which primarily consists of conference tournament and NCAA tournament games.

Betting Against the Public and Public Games

Betting Against the Public has proven to work across all of the major sports, but March Madness is a special time of year.  When one team garners more than 60% of the bets, and is favored by at least 16 points, the underdog wins against the spread 56.5% of the time, since 2004.  The logic behind the approach is simple.  When people wager too heavily for one team, oddsmakers shift the betting lines to encourage action on the other side.  Often times, the new point spreads swing too far in favor of the unpopular team.  People who bet against every large favorite that received at least 60% of the bets would have made money in four of the last seven years, including the last two seasons.

Contrarian Betting Approach for March Madness

Summary

College basketball offers sports investors many investment opportunities — and at the same time, many challenges.  We have reviewed some tools that sports investors can use for college hoops.  This includes SportsInsights.com’s bread-and-butter sports investing tools such as Betting Percentages and Line Moves.  In addition, we highlighted the Number of Bets — which is often overlooked as an indicator.  Now, let the Madness begin — and let the “sports investing profits” roll in!  Good luck!

Disclaimer
We do not guarantee that the trends and biases we’ve found will continue to exist. It is impossible to predict the future. Any serious academic research in the field of “market efficiencies” recognizes that inefficiencies may disappear over time. Once inefficiencies are discovered, it is only a matter of time before the market corrects itself. We do not guarantee our data is error-free. However, we’ve tried our best to make sure every score and percentage is correct.