Sports bookmakers won’t forget Week 9 of the 2018 NFL regular season any time soon.
Last week’s NFL games were among the costliest in history for oddsmakers in the United States, as a host of popular favorites covered their respective spreads, according to ESPN’s David Purdum. Nevada’s sportsbooks lost an estimated $7 million to $10 million Sunday on a football afternoon that veterans in the industry rank among their worst ever.
“Disaster,” is how MGM vice president of race and sports Jay Rood described Sunday’s NFL betting.
“Bad. Really bad,” Jeff Davis said. The Caesars Palace head of risk operations has worked in the industry for 25 years also said Week 9 made his top 10 list of costliest NFL Sundays.
The Chicago Bears’ covered the spread with their 41-9 rout of the Buffalo Bills. The Minnesota Vikings also covered in beating the Detroit Lions 24-9, and the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 23-16 win over the Baltimore Ravens further boosted the betting public’s fortunes. The Kansas City Chiefs’ 37-21 win over the Cleveland Browns confirmed Sunday as a bookmakers’ bloodbath, as 88 percent of the point-spread bets at William Hill’s sportsbooks in Nevada and New Jersey were on Kansas City, following similar trends in the aforementioned games.
“The public just nailed it,” Boyd Gaming sportsbook director Bob Scucci told ESPN via email. “They had the big favorites — Bears, Chiefs, Panthers and Vikings — as well as the short ‘dogs, Texans and Steelers. And a lot of the overs.
“By the time we got to the two biggest games — Packers-Patriots and Rams-Saints — there were so many parlays alive that we were going to lose no matter what.”
And lose they did.
