NCAAB Futures and Season Props

How to Bet on NCAA Basketball Odds to Win National Championship

Next to the Super Bowl, there’s no event more popular in sports betting than the NCAA Tournament. College Basketball Odds to win the National Championship are posted year-round, so if you have a hunch that a Cinderalla team can make it to the big dance, then you might find +EV (positive expected value) opportunities by betting on National Championship futures odds before the season tips off.

Of course, to partake in the madness you need to sign up at online sportsbooks like BetMGM, PointsBet, FanDuel, DraftKings, and FOX Bet as well as find out the sports betting logistics in your state. Laws and regulations vary across jurisdictions, some forbidding betting on in-state colleges — lame, we know. You can find out all of those details with our state pages for sports betting in Michigan, Colorado, Tennessee, New Jersey, New York, Indiana,West Virginia, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and more!

Now that you know where and how to bet on NCAA Basketball Odds to Win National Championship, let’s take a closer look at what it means to bet on college basketball futures and how to read odds.

What Are College Basketball Futures

In gambling parlance, a futures bet is any wager on an event that will be determined in the future. College basketball futures bets include NCAA basketball odds to win National Championship, conference championships, and individual player accolades like the John R. Wooden Award.

NCAA Basketball Futures Odds Explained

Often, futures odds are listed with a plus sign (+) in front of a three to five-digit number. Here are a few examples, using current odds to win the NCAA Tournament.

Alabama +900
Texas Tech +18000

The odds above are simply shorthand for “Alabama is 9-to-1 and Texas Tech is 180-to-1 to win the NCAA basketball national championship.”

On these bets, a $10 on Alabama will win bettors $90 in profit, while a $10 on Texas Tech will win $1800. Simple enough.

In some cases, when a team is especially dominant or later in the NCAA Tournament when there are fewer teams remaining, the favorite will be listed with a minus-sign (-) in front. This makes them what sports bettors call the “odds-on favorite.” By wagering on the odds-on favorite, bettors will have to risk more money than they will win. Like the previous examples, these too payout like moneylines. So, if a team has -120 odds to win the national championship, bettors must risk $12 to win $10.

You can also use our Odds Calculator to see the payout of a futures bet before placing it.

2023 NCAA Basketball Odds To Win National Championship

When the futures market first opened for the 2022-23 college basketball season, Gonzaga and North Carolina were the top two favorites, but both have had challenging seasons and are no longer among the top teams. There is no clear favorite this year, but Houston (+650), Kansas (+650), Alabama (+900), Purdue (+1200), and UCLA (+1200) have been the top teams for most of the season so far. The title chase is more wide open than it has been in several years, which should make for a very exciting and entertaining March.