BetMGM, which took a $20,000 wager to win $80,000 on the Lakers to win the franchise’s 18th NBA championship, is on the hook for multiple six figures if Los Angeles wins it all.
Todd Dewey
Todd Dewey covers sports betting for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
tdewey@reviewjournal.com … @tdewey33 on Twitter. 702-383-0354
Favorites were 9-5 ATS in Week 5 entering “Sunday Night Football.” Bettors won big as the Packers, Buccaneers, Titans, Cowboys and Cardinals all covered the spread.
Houston furniture store owner Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale bet $3.35 million in June to win $35.6 million on the Astros to win the World Series.
Tampa Bay beat New England 19-17, but the vast majority of bettors lost on the game because the Buccaneers failed to cover as 7-point favorites.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers play the New England Patriots on Sunday in Tom Brady’s return to the city where he won six Super Bowls with Bill Belichick as coach.
Bettors were all over the Raiders, who outlasted the Dolphins 31-28 in overtime as 3½-point favorites after squandering an 11-point fourth-quarter lead.
On the lookahead line at the Westgate SuperBook, which posts lines for NFL games 12 days in advance, the Raiders opened -1 over the Dolphins and that number has shot up to -4.
The Raiders are arguably the most surprising 2-0 team after traveling across the country on a short week and beating the Steelers 26-17 on Sunday as 5½-point underdogs.
One of the biggest challenges for bettors is to not overreact to what happens one week, especially in Week 1 of the NFL season.
New Orleans, which whipped Green Bay 38-3, delivered the biggest win on a monster day for the books as underdogs went 10-3 ATS with eight outright upsets entering Sunday night.
The biggest line move has seen the New Orleans Saints drop from 3-point home favorites over the Green Bay Packers to 4-point underdogs in a game that was moved to Jacksonville.
Florida resident Mark DeRosa won $300,000 on Lamar Jackson to win the 2019 NFL MVP and more than a half million on Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2020.
Professional sports bettor Cris Zeniuk claimed second and fifth place in the Circa Million II contest (3,148 entries) last season for $244,444 in prize money.
The NFL determines strength of schedule by opponents’ winning percentage from last season. For a better barometer, we combined opponents’ 2021 season win totals at Las Vegas sportsbooks.
Pro bettors account for most of the exhibition action, which explains why the preseason limits at sportsbooks are one-tenth of what they are during the regular season.
