On Thursday, while bookmakers and bettors were focused on college basketball tournaments, big wagers on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to win the Super Bowl showed up at multiple Las Vegas sportsbooks.
Tampa Bay was around a 50-1 long shot when bets upward of $10,000 came in Thursday at the SuperBook, South Point and Circa Sports. Bookmakers drastically adjusted their odds, while trying to determine what was behind the flurry of interest in the Buccaneers. They’d find out three days later, right in the middle of the madness.
At 7:13 p.m. ET, Sunday, just minutes after the bracket for the NCAA tournament was released, Tom Brady announced he was unretiring and would be returning to play for Tampa Bay. The Brady news hit during one of the busiest stretches of the year for oddsmakers: the hours after the NCAA tournament bracket is unveiled, when sportsbooks were racing to post point spreads on…
