College Basketball Futures - March Madness Odds

College Basketball Futures Betting

This is a long-term wager on which team will win a tournament or which player will win an award. The most popular futures market for NCAAB fans is predicting the winner of March Madness. Oddsmakers at all the leading sportsbooks will weigh up the strengths and weaknesses of each team in the bracket. They will then assign a set of odds for college basketball to each team, based on the probability of it seizing glory.

There will be a favorite or joint favorites, and the odds will then grow progressively longer until you reach the rank outsider in the NCAA Basketball odds. In 2019, Duke was the +320 favorite to win the NCAAB men’s tournament, followed by Gonzaga at +500 and North Carolina at +600, while Texas Tech was a popular pick at +2000. Teams including Bradley and Gardner-Webb were complete outsiders at +5000. In 2020, Kansas was the +450 favorite to win the tournament, followed by Gonzaga and Baylor at +800, and West Virginia was a popular long shot pick, but the tournament was cancelled due to Covid-19. Gonzaga, Virginia and Villanova were the early favorites to win March Madness in 2021.

If you see a plus sign in college betting, it tells you the profit you stand to win from a $100 stake. A $100 bet on Duke in 2019 would have earned you $320 if successful, whereas a $100 bet on Bradley would have netted you $5,000. In the end, +800 shot Virginia won the tournament. You do not have to bet $100. A $10 bet at odds of +800 would have netted you an $80 profit. You also get your stake back if your bet is successful, so you would have enjoyed a return of $90. If you had bet $500 on Virginia at +800, you would have made a $4,000 profit and been handed a return of $4,500. The futures prices change as the tournament progresses: by the time the final four odds were released in 2019, the college basketball line on Virginia winning the tournament had decreased significantly as it was one of the few teams still standing.