New March Madness Format May Increase Online Casino Gambling
The NCAA announced today its new format for the men's basketball championship tournament, known for its unpredictability as March Madness. Players from office bracket gamblers to patrons of online casinos will see a difference in setting up wagers on the outcome of the three-week event.Internet gambling sites may even benefit from the new rules, which leave scant time for filling out hard copies of brackets, let alone circulating and collecting them.
Earlier this year, NCAA officials confimed plans to expand the tourney field, albeit only to 68, a more conservative adjustment than many traditional fans had feared. Now, the college sports organization has said how the new field will play out.
In two early games, the last four seeds will match up. This group is likely to be made up of automatic bids to smaller conferences, thus eliminating two teams from the leagues not considered able to play effectively on the national stage.
Such a move is sure to draw some criticism from open-tournament advocates, who sometimes allege the seeding is designed to enrich the power conferences at the expense of deserving small schools. But the other two early games will be between the last four at-large bid recepients, who generally represent the six or seven largest conferences.
"You're not going to come up with a model that is going to appease every constituency out there," said NCAA committee chairman Dan Guerrero. "But we felt that this model provided the opportunity to do something special for the tournament."
Once the four early games are completed on the opening Tuesday and Wednesday, the remaining 64 teams begin play as usual on Thursday. However, the early start means brackets containing the full tournament would have to be completed by Tuesday evening, not much time after the Sunday night release of the seedings.
Online casinos can offer the convenience of instant entries, avoiding the need to pass out and collect bracket sheets. This may lead to greater numbers of March Madness players seeking online gambling sites to bet their predictions than in the past.
