As sports slowly but surely return to the American landscape, so too will sports betting. One must wonder, though: will Vegas – and sports betting in general – be ripe for the picking as sportsbooks adjust to the coronavirus pandemic and all the complications it brings?
“No one really knows,” Radio.com sports betting insider Nick Kostos told Andrew Bogusch and Shaun Morash, who were filling in as hosts of The DA Show. “I could tell you yes; I could tell you no. I could stand on the table and make a strong case either way, but no one really knows how this is going to go. What I can tell you is all the really sharp handicappers out there that are modeling games and looking for a mathematical edge – quote-unquote Vegas – will bake that kind of stuff into the line. So it’s not like Vegas is going to get taken by surprise. They’re going to be prepared for how this is going to go, the way people are going to be betting on games here. So I don’t really know if there’s going to be a huge advantage or not. I tend to think probably not.”
That said, Kostos does think there could be a significant spike in sports betting in the coming months.
“I think the gambling space is going to come out of the pandemic almost stronger than it was going into it,” he said. “States are going to legalize it because they need revenue, and I think people are itching to kind of put money down and watch a sporting event. You’re going to have lots of people betting on sports, maybe more than we’ve ever seen before here. Casual money is going to be in there; people don’t really know what they’re doing. I’m kind of reticent to say it will be good or bad either way. I think we’ll probably be able to pick out fairly quickly some really important trends. But right out of the jump, I think it’s very tough to say one way or the other.”