Betting action on the odds

to win Super Bowl XLVI was down at multiple Las Vegas sportsbooks, as the NFL lookout hit 60 days this week and became the longest work stoppage in the sport’s history.

But book managers aren’t panicking, yet.

Confidence remains high around the Vegas sports betting scene that the NFL will get things worked out and a surge of betting action will follow to even things up.

“We are still seeing action on the futures, but the handle is moderately lower than it’s been in the past at this stage of the offseason,” Chuck Esposito, sportsbook manager at the Venetian told Covers.com. “In addition to the lockout, the lack of free agency and player movement has a lot of bettors guessing who will be playing where next season.”

Or if we’ll be playing at all.

The situation is similar over at the sportsbooks at the MGM Mirage and Caesars.

“We’re still getting folks playing 20 bucks on their favorite team, but we haven’t had any large opinionated money come in, so that’s where I think we’re a tick off on a few things,” MGM Mirage sportsbook manager Jay Rood told Covers.com. “We’re probably a little short compared to years past, but nothing significant.”

Sportsbooks generally see action on the Super Bowl future odds as soon as they’re released in mid- to late January. They’ll get a little surge after the NFL draft, before things slow down through May and June. The big rush comes in July and August, leading up to the season.

If the work stoppage continues into those months, that’s when you might hear a few more bookies publicly express concerns. But for now, it’s business as usual.

“Obviously, if there’s no NFL, it’s not a good thing,” said Mike Colbert, race and sportsbook manager for Cantor Gaming, “but sitting here and worrying about it would be the last thing I’d do.”

While Colbert and other book managers appear unfazed by the potential of shortened NFL season, Vegas professional handicapper and Covers Expert Teddy Sevransky has a grimmer outlook.

“I'll take the over second week if September for the first games to be played,” Sevransky wrote in an email.

Impact on College Football

The money not being bet on the Super Bowl odds hasn’t shown up on the BCS Championship odds. None of the sportsbooks I talked to over the last week had seen a noticeable spike in action on their odds to the win the 2012 BCS title.

But that’s not surprising. Like the NFL, the majority of action bet on who will win college football’s national championship doesn’t come in until July and August. Sometimes books will see a little spike during spring football practice and again right after the preseason publications start hitting the stands in early June.

If Sevransky’s prediction of a delayed start to the NFL season comes to fruition, there’s speculation that college football will jump on the opportunity to move games to Sunday or possibly even Monday night. The Pac-12 has already said publicly that they are considering moving games off of their traditional Saturday slate. But it will cause a scheduling nightmare.

“What if NFL decides to play after the college football folks already moved their game to Sunday?” Rood pointed out.

Impact on Oddsmakers

Pete Korner and his staff of oddsmakers at The Sports Club in Las Vegas aren’t sweating the lockout. In fact, if it extends into June, Korner will have more time to focus on preparing for college football, the more difficult sport to handicap.

“There’s more work for college than there is for pro,” Korner told Covers.com. “We’re only talking about 16 games in pro, where the spreads are anywhere from pick (‘em) to maybe 14 in extreme cases. For college, we have to do 65 games a week and with information that isn’t as readily available.

“So college football is much more difficult to prepare for. The NFL isn’t that tough, but has such a reverberating effect with total handle.”

Korner waits to see a few of the preseason college football publications to come out before beginning his preparation. He and his staff focus solely on which players are returning for which teams; then use their power ratings from the end of the previous season to create a base line for the early games.

“We’ll go by the hardcore facts of who’s returning and who’s not, and how each team will be viewed, whether they’ll be better or worse,” Korner explained.

Korner expects to release NFL and college football season win totals in late July, right around the time NFL preseason is slated to start. But, in the meantime, like most of the Vegas sports betting scene, he is in a holding pattern.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Korner said. “We have futures up, and that’s about all we can do. As far as the betting base, I don’t think there’s that much concern right now. Until there’s some sort of lead that says, hey, this is not going to get done, then sportsbooks will have to determine what to do.”