Expanded College Football Playoff field draws more bets and on more teams
Texas winning the national championship next month would be bad news for BetMGM Sportsbook
LAS VEGAS — If Texas coach Steve Sarkisian holds aloft the College Football Playoff trophy next month, that will be bad news for BetMGM Sportsbook.
It would be similarly disappointing if any of the coaches at Boise State, Indiana or Arizona State end up celebrating a title with confetti falling all around them inside Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Wait, what?
Texas has attracted a lot of money all season to go all the way, but those other schools provide the hope of a big payoff. The fifth-seeded Longhorns are the co-favorite at BetMGM with No. 1 and unbeaten Oregon at 7-2 odds; the other three are least 40-1, while Georgia is right behind Oregon and Texas as the next favorite.
“These teams get hot and people just want to have a flyer on them,” BetMGM trading manager Seamus Magee said. “They don't want to be standing there and not have a ticket on some of these long-shot teams.”
Expanding the playoff field from four to 12 teams this year meant more betting in general on college football and more varieties of wagering on the postseason. There were meaningful games played in the final month by not only Arizona State, Boise State and Indiana, but also SMU, Army and UNLV — a number of teams not always in the national title conversation.
“It's one of the highest handles we've ever had on our national-championship market,” Magee said. “We're in more states, for one, but the activity and the betting patterns we're seeing, it definitely feels a lot more than it has in years past.”
Magee said BetMGM has received action on both sides of the first-round game between 11th-seeded SMU and sixth-seeded Penn State, but the Mustangs have drawn
Read more on abcnews.go.com
