It’s Finally Legal to Bet on March Madness This Year

When the odds came out for the game between Duke and the University of Virginia in January, it was a seismic event at the Action Network’s offices in New York. The staff at the digital media startup had been waiting for days to find out who was favored to win the matchup between two of college basketball’s best teams. When the news broke on a Friday evening that oddsmakers favored Duke by four points, pandemonium broke out. Reporters and editors scrambled to publish stories—and place bets of their own. “They were screaming, like, ‘Oh my God, Virginia minus four, go, go, go!’ ” says reporter and senior producer Darren Rovell.

Action Network Inc. was founded on the premise that this mania, long relegated to Las Vegas casinos and black-market-barroom sportsbooks, is about to find its way into the American mainstream. Last May the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the federal law that had confined legal sportsbooks to Nevada. Since then seven more states have begun to allow betting, and a couple dozen others are considering it. Nationwide, operators’ revenue could reach $6.5 billion by 2023, according to researcher Eilers & Krejcik Gaming. Bettors in New Jersey, where legalization arrived last June, are already wagering almost $400 million every month.