SEC Baseball Tournament Offers Betting Boost
The SEC baseball tournament begins Tuesday, giving bookmakers a potential baseball betting boost on collegiate sports in the slower pre-football months.
College football season gets underway in the SEC on Aug. 27, with Vanderbilt visiting Hawaii.
Meanwhile, college sports fans and bettors in the South are expected to turn their attention to the SEC baseball tournament in Hoover, Alabama, from Tuesday through Sunday.
Arkansas Bettors Can Request Wager Options
In Arkansas, bettors can contact Saracen Casino Resort to request a wager they’d like to see offered on the app, said Neal Atkinson, Saracen’s director of table games, sportsbook and poker operations.
Bettors can go to the @BetSarcen Twitter feed or #MySaracen hashtag on social media sites to request specific matchups and props, Atkinson told Gambling.com.
Atkinson said the resort will offer pre-game run lines, Over/Under options and moneyline bets on SEC tournament games. Player and game prop bets also will be available, mostly on Arkansas Razorback games.
“Most of these lines will be published on the day of the game since the specific matchups are determined by winners and the status of starting and bullpen pitchers,” he said.
Tennessee Ranked No. 1 Nationally
John Shaw, the sportsbook supervisor at Margaritaville Resort Casino in Bossier City, Louisiana, said the resort’s Barstool Sportsbook hasn’t posted tournament odds yet, but he is keeping an eye on potential key games.
One intriguing matchup could happen in the third round with a possible meeting between Tennessee and LSU, he said.
“Tennessee comes in as the heavy favorite,” Shaw told Gambling.com. “The only team to beat Tennessee twice was Kentucky, which would have to beat Auburn and LSU to face them again.”
Tennessee (49-7) is the No. 1-ranked team in the nation. LSU (37-18) finished its up-and-down season with a three-game road sweep of Vanderbilt in Nashville, including a 21-10 victory in the season finale on Saturday.
Tennessee’s first tournament game is scheduled for Wednesday against the winner of Tuesday's Vanderbilt-Ole Miss contest. LSU also begins play on Wednesday, facing Tuesday’s Auburn-Kentucky winner.
Tennessee has not won the SEC tournament since 1995, Shaw noted.
“LSU holds the most career tournament wins with 12, and 2017 was the last time they won it,” he said.
Sports Betting Legal In Few SEC States
Sports betting is legal and live in four of the 11 states with university athletic teams competing in the SEC. These are Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
Sports betting is legal but not operational in Florida. The Seminole Tribe launched a mobile wagering app last year, but it was discontinued in a legal dispute and had not been reinstated.
Off-site mobile wagering is legal in Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana.
Legislative efforts to approve sports betting in other SEC states, including Kentucky, Alabama and Georgia, were unsuccessful this year.
In Texas, the nation’s second-most-populous state, lawmakers who support sports betting have been unable to win legislative support and will have to wait until next year to try again.
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