NBA Draft Lottery: Chicago Gamblers Burning Money On Bulls
Chicago Bulls fans are apparently feeling lucky.
On Tuesday, May 16, the National Basketball Association was set to hold its annual NBA draft lottery event to determine the order of picks in the June draft. On the line was the opportunity to land Victor Wembanyama, widely regarded as the best NBA prospect since LeBron James. Many observers said he’s even better than James was as a teenager.
According to the NBA, the Bulls had a 1.8% chance of landing the No. 1 pick, a percentage based on the team’s performance in the 2022-23 season when Chicago had a 40-42 record.
We know the real odds for the Bulls, but what are the sportsbook odds?
The +5000 betting odds offered by BetMGM Sportsbook had an implied probability of 1.96%, so you would be overpaying to wager on Chicago. It’s not a massive difference, but it’s far from a value bet. Bulls fans are betting on history repeating.
In 2008, Chicago had a 1.7% chance of landing the top pick—and it happened. The Bulls overcame the long odds to select Derrick Rose from Memphis with the first pick.
Do People Bet on the Draft Lottery?
If you’re someone who is trying to win in the long run gambling on sports, we recommend the unit betting system. We’d recommend that you wager no more than a quarter of a unit on the NBA draft lottery, as it’s pure gambling and impossible to find any edge. You could compare the draft lottery betting market to playing a table game in a Las Vegas casino.
At BetMGM, a whopping 24.3% of the NBA draft lottery betting handle was on Chicago. BetMGM is online in Illinois, one of more than 30 states with legal sports gambling.
Perhaps a recent Chicago Sun-Times cover helped fuel the wishful thinking.
Indiana Pacers bettors were also willing to overpay for some skin in the game for the NBA draft lottery show. BetMGM reported that a massive 64.7% of the handle was on the Pacers to snag the first pick. Their odds were +1200, which had an implied probability of 7.69%.
The real odds for Indiana to get the first pick were 6.8%. Remember that you must pay taxes on sports betting winnings, so think of these bets as simply entertainment.
Sticking with Midwest teams, we must commend Detroit Pistons fans for not biting on this betting market. Despite being tied for the best odds to land the top pick at +550, just 0.2% of the betting handle was on the Pistons. The +550 odds had an implied probability of 15.38%. The real probability for Detroit was 14%.
The San Antonio Spurs (3.9% of the handle) and Houston Rockets (0.3%) also had +550 odds.
BetMGM is also licensed in Indiana and Michigan. The sports betting site didn’t provide dollar amounts for the draft lottery handle, but in an email to Forbes Betting said that the draft lottery handle is less than the handle taken on a single NBA game. After all, it’s a novelty market.
