Tune in to any modern college sports event, and you’re likely to hear about more than the competing athletes’ strengths and weaknesses. You’ll also get tips on point spreads, the over/under, props, and parlays. Since sports gambling went legal nationwide in 2018, online wagering has forced its way into almost every game, tournament, match, and meet. It’s hard to remember that, just a few March Madnesses ago, a fan could get an illicit thrill by filling out a paper bracket and paying $20 into the office or res-hall pool.
Gambling is big business, but that doesn’t make it smart business, at least for the gamblers. If you do choose to make the NCAA basketball tournaments a little more interesting, Jason Kido Lopez has some advice to help you make sane decisions during March Madness. Lopez, a UW–Madison professor of communication arts, studies sports media and sports gambling and the effect that they’ve had on American culture.
“I want to be clear that I’m not a psychologist,” he says. “I don’t study gambling addiction. Addiction is a real problem, and I don’t have anything to say about that. But gambling can also be a normal extension of sports fandom. It can be playful rather than harmful. For people who want to gamble playfully, who want to make a bet and not feel like they’re being taken, I can offer a little advice.”
Here are Lopez’s four tips for gambling wisely:
1. Consider your bet as spent money, not an investment.
“I’m a third-generation sports fan and a third-generation sports gambler. This comes from my father who learned it from his father: view that money as spent. View it as entertainment dollars, just like you would view spending money on a movie. You’re spending money to have extra engagement with the game in some way, so just view that money as gone. If you go to a movie theater, you pay your $15 or whatever it is now, and that money is gone, but you get to watch the movie. If you think of a sports bet that way, then you can still enjoy watching this sporting event. And hey, maybe at the end you get your money back plus a little sum.”
2. Gambling is structured to beat you.
“The system is set up for them to separate you from your money. It is really, really hard for even a person who knows a ton about sports to make money sports betting. There are structural reasons for that. It’s why these sports books make millions of dollars. You’re betting into a market. The odds and all those numbers you see, those are all determined by the market, which is full of smart people with a lot of money who have more information than you, and they’re making bets and moving lines. The market is filled with really smart people who know a lot more than you.”
3. Know the game.
“The nice thing about sports betting as opposed to other kinds of gambling is that it’s pretty upfront about how they separate you from your money. You are locked into a contract, and the contract terms are very specific. You know exactly what the terms of your bet are. They’re set up to be very clear and discreet. But they also advertise certain kinds of bets and encourage certain kinds of gaming. And you need to understand what those are and why the app wants you to make that bet. Take parlays: apps like FanDuel and DraftKings encourage parlays, and they seem really exciting: get these four things all correct, and you’ll win a lot more than you would betting each one individually. It seems exciting because of the high reward, but it’s also very high risk, because if you get any one of the parts of the parlay wrong, you lose the whole thing. It’s intended to tempt you, to separate you from your money. You can keep yourself from making bad decisions if you’re cognizant of how they’re trying to do all that.”
4. When you’re losing, don’t chase.
“This is one [that is as] old as gambling: don’t chase. Once you lose your 10-leg parlay within the first two minutes of March Madness, don’t jump on the app and try to get that money back by making a live bet.”
