Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Las Vegas Betting Preview: 2013 Kobalt Tools 400

By Micah Roberts
Johnson is the 5/1 favorite to win for the fifth time in Vegas (Getty)

The betting on the NASCAR races this weekend will be the most action Las Vegas sports books will see on auto racing this year. The books will also offer the most betting options, but don’t expect to see the same amount of betting propositions like we saw last month for the Super Bowl, or the same type of handle that helped generate a state record $98 million in Super Bowl handle. Most sports books offered over 250 different Super Bowl props. This weekend, we'll see an average of about 30 per property for Sunday‘s race.

But the big difference between pro football and NASCAR, besides the obvious, is that football and betting have gone hand in hand since the NFL began, and prospered because of it. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell might think otherwise, but the truth is that NASCAR is where Goodell thinks the NFL is regards to betting -- a small part of the overall experience and not defined by it.

Betting on NASCAR has been a relatively new revelation that was spurred on by the Las Vegas Motor Speedway when the first Cup race came to town in 1998. The sport was already wildly popular without betting, and was at peak growth period in their history. All the sports books wanted to do was just offer a few things that bettors might want to bet; a driver vs. driver matchup, who will have the best finish. And of course there was also odds to win on the event as well.

Sports books took notice of the volume on that initial race won by Mark Martin and figured there was a market for NASCAR in the sports books and most began offering odds on a weekly basis. The weekly handle without the race in town plummeted, but what it did was help get the majority of books out there to at least pay attention to it. If you offer odds on something, you shouldn’t have the majority of your betting public being smarter than you, so books followed it.

Read More Here......Top 5 Finish Prediction

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