It was a good run for the betting public over the past few weeks against the sportsbooks in NFL action. Unfortunately, it appears to have been stopped, at least for a week.
Big upsets shocked the league and bettors in Week 10. This led to some nice victories for the books, who have struggled recently.
Quick move on Thursday night game
Price drops usually happen in the stock market when something really bad happens, like a drug manufacturer not getting FDA approval for their new offering. Or a tech company suffers a security breach. Or a CEO gets stoned on a podcast and says something potentially incriminating.
While working on the Week 10 look-ahead, we saw the line on the Panthers-Steelers game move from PIT -5.5 to -4 in about five minutes. The line moved at virtually every sportsbook in New Jersey.
I stopped and tried to see if there was a glitch or something happened. I never received an explanation as to what happened. Honestly, books tend to correct themselves sometimes.
The line may have helped the Steelers’ backers. William Hill had it a coin flip but far more tickets sold on the Panthers. PlaySugarHouse saw it more tilted towards Pittsburgh, who won a rout.
Mixed bag Sunday
The betting public has backed favorites to big wins over the past few weeks. Sunday was a letdown, to say the least.
The biggest win for the books was the Titans upset at home of the Patriots. This was the highest handle game for William Hill on Sunday. The Pats got 90% of the public money and got thrashed. PlaySugarHouse noted that this was its biggest win of the week.
Of the four biggest favorites in terms of percentage of money bet on the spread at William Hill, only one covered. That was the Packers, who dominated Miami.
In the early games, Atlanta’s loss to Cleveland was also a win for the books. The Saints mastery of Cincinnati proved the biggest win for the FanDuel Sportsbook players.
In the nightcap, for the second year in a row, the Eagles received tremendous public support against Dallas on Sunday Night Football, coming in off a bye. This year, they lost, giving FanDuel its best win of the week.
Monday night was a consolation for those who dared wager the Giants playing in San Fran. The late TD drive won the game and cashed for the 74% of the money line bets and 75% of the spread money.
Shallow pool for DraftKings
This was the first week for the DraftKings Sportsbook Pools betting options. Pick games, bet money, top performers win prizes. Just like your office pool, only clearly more legal and less divisive.
DK promised a minimum of $200,000 for the first week’s prize pool, with $100K split between the clever ones who correctly guessed the winners of all 13 games Sunday and Monday (Thursday night wasn’t included as the pool launched that day). The buy-in was $20.
After the site had some issues launching in the app Thursday evening, there were some other issues. First of all, apparently they didn’t get the 10,000 needed to get the base $200K. They got just 5,200 entrants.
Then the games happened and that actually helped them because no one correctly guessed all 13 games. One player got 12 right and pocketed $60,000.
The site claims they will roll over any unclaimed prizes so the $100K top prize becomes part of next week’s kitty. Getting 10,000 players in Jersey to pony up $20 is hard, even with falling gas prices. I mean, we are near the holidays.
