CONCORD – The New Hampshire Lottery expects the Men’s College Basketball Tournament to be New Hampshire’s biggest sports betting event of the year, with heavy betting volume starting with the first tip-off and continuing throughout the three-week tournament. The tournament begins this Thursday night with four “play-in games,” and then begins in earnest with the first-round games from March 19-22.

Johnny Avello, who has spent more than 30 years as an oddsmaker in Las Vegas, said he expects both mobile sports betting and in-person betting in the Granite State to be robust throughout the tournament.

“We believe the action is going to be pretty much nonstop Friday and Saturday,” Avello said. “Things are looking very good as we head into the opening round of the tournament. From joining office pools, to betting individual games and scores throughout the tournament, there are literally countless ways to approach this time of year as a sports bettor, and that is part of what makes it so exciting.”

Avello noted the first weekend tends to bring smaller bets but as there are a lot more games, it is a large weekend in terms of betting volume and trends. As the tournament progresses, the bets get bigger as there are fewer and fewer games, leading right up to the championship game.

This is the first time New Hampshire is taking bets on the tournament because last year’s event was cancelled due to COVID-19. In light of this, Avello provided some insight for DraftKings customers in the state:

Start free – DraftKings and the New Hampshire Lottery offer a number of free-to-play introductory pools where players still have the chance to win. “This allows players to learn how to navigate playing on the digital side without the same risk of a pay-to-play game,” Avello said. Additionally, DraftKings is also offering customers both free-to-play and pay-to-play opportunities to play brackets with total prizes ranging from $50,000 to $1 million.

Get familiar – “Before you log on to the app or enter the sportsbook, you should get informed on the games themselves, know the teams a little bit, look at the point spreads,” Avello said. In particular, players should make sure they understand how betting point spreads works. If a player is betting the point spread on a team that is a 10-point favorite, the player’s team has to win by more than 10 points to win the wager. Conversely, if the player is betting the underdog in that game, the team can lose, but the team must not lose by more than nine points to win the wager.

Keep it simple – The sheer variety of ways to bet on the tournament and sports in general can be overwhelming if players are just starting out, so keep it simple and just pick a moneyline winner. “Find a team that you think can win straight up,” Avello said, rather than worrying about betting points spreads, scores or parlays.

Look deeper – Looking at the tournament bracket, the #1 seeds–Gonzaga, Baylor, Illinois and Michigan–deserve players’ attention, but “sometimes you want to go deeper,” Avello said, noting Loyola Chicago (#8 seed), Houston (#2 seed), Colgate (#14 seed), Iowa (#2 seed), Alabama (#2 seed), Texas (#3 seed), BYU (#6 seed) and Florida State (#4 seed) are all teams to watch and consider.

Since the New Hampshire Lottery and DraftKings launched mobile sports betting in New Hampshire on December 30, 2019, bettors have placed more than 11.4 million wagers totaling nearly $428 million.

New Hampshire residents can download the DraftKings Sportsbook app to place wagers through DraftKings, which is the exclusive digital operator in New Hampshire. Sports fans can place bets on the DraftKings Sportsbook app via iOS and Android or online at Sportsbook.DraftKings.com.

For more information and to download the app, visit: https://nhlottery.com/Sports/Mobile-Internet-Sports-Betting.

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