New Jersey and Nevada sportsbook operators took a pounding as the NFL’s Week 9 of 2018 turned into a bookmaker’s bloodbath.
New Jersey sportsbooks like William Hill, Sugarhouse, DraftKings, FanDuel, BetStars and 888sport are among those who’ll be licking their wounds right now after being heavily punished, but it’s the long-standing Nevada bookmakers whom we see as being best equipped to comment on the severity of the hiding handed out both to US sportsbooks and to the many offshore international sportsbooks that cover US football Nevada’s verdict?
Week 9 was one of the costliest in US betting history.
Why? Because a fistful of popular NFL favourites covered their respective spreads and according to ESPN’s David Purdum, it saw Nevada’s sportsbooks lose between $7 and $10 million on a Sunday afternoon of football that the older hands in the game are seeing as a Top-10 worst-ever for the bookies.
“Disaster,” is the way PlayMGM vice president of racing and sports Jay Rood described it.
“Yes, it was bad. Really bad,” Caesar’s Palace head of risk operations Jeff Davis agreed – and he should know.
He has been in the business for 25 years and claimed that Week 9 easily made his top 10 list of costliest NFL Sundays.
The Chicago Bears’ covered the spread with their 41-9 hammering of the Buffalo Bills. The Minnesota Vikings also did it in beating the Detroit Lions 24-9, and the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 23-16 triumph in their match against the Baltimore Ravens further added to the delight of the punters.
And that wasn’t the end. In trouncing the Cleveland Browns 37-21, Kansas City Chiefs continued to do damage, notably to William Hill’s Nevada and New Jersey sportsbooks who had 88 per cent of the point-spread bets between them.
The public just nailed it,” Boyd Gaming sportsbook director Bob Scucci is reported to have told ESPN via email.
“They had the big favourites, Bears, Chiefs, Panthers and Vikings, as well as the short ‘dogs, the Texans and the Steelers.
They also carried a lot of ‘overs’ bets – and it cost them plenty.
Said Scucci, “By the time we got to the two biggest games – the Packers-Patriots and the Rams-Saints – there were so many parlays alive that we were going to lose no matter what.”