AUGUSTA, Maine — Sportsbooks say the University of Maine women’s basketball team has about a 4 percent chance to upset Ohio State in the NCAA Tournament on Friday, while the resurgent men’s hockey team is a slight underdog in a playoff game later that day.
Mainers can root for their flagship university’s teams, but they are not allowed to bet on them. The 2022 law that enshrined sports betting here bars wagering on collegiate teams based in the state. That prohibition applies no matter where the sporting event takes place.
This is common in states like Maine with no major professional teams. The state is among 39 where betting is legal and active, according to The Action Network. About a dozen of them bar wagering on in-state colleges, including New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island. Massachusetts and Connecticut bar it except when their teams are in tournaments.
Maine allows betting on the outcomes of all other collegiate games. It also allows “proposition bets” on individual performances of players, such as how many rebounds a basketball player gets in a game. Several states bar prop bets on all or just in-state college athletics.
Legal betting opened here in early November, nearly a year and a half after Democratic Gov. Janet Mills signed off on the law that handed the mobile betting market to tribes. That means it is the first year that Mainers can bet on popular sporting events including the Super Bowl and the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments that began this week.
DraftKings, the online betting giant that is partnering with the Passamaquoddy tribe, has dominated the Maine market so far, with $126.4 million in bets placed on the platform. The other active betting site, Caesars Sportsbook, drew less than $27.6 million in partnership with the Penobscot, Maliseet and Mi’kmaq tribes.
The UMaine women, who are ranked 15th in the region playing the opening round of the tournament in Columbus, Ohio, are taking on the No. 2 hometown university as 26.5-point underdogs on Friday afternoon, according to FanDuel. The men’s hockey team are 1.5-goal underdogs in the Hockey East semifinal game in Boston that night.
