National Football League underdogs threw bookies to the wolves this weekend, winning 12 out of 16 games and showering gamblers with cash.
Odds makers had to cough up an estimated record $563 million for a single day’s losses on professional football games after last Sunday’s action.
Payouts were more than double what they should have been, said gaming industry experts.
“It was a seismic event,” said Anthony Munnelly, vice president of big online gaming firm SportInteraction.com. “We’re calling it ‘Black Sunday.’ Simply put, sportsbooks took a beating, and recreational gamblers cleaned up.”
Such a wipeout hadn’t happened in years, but Munnelly declined to say how much his firm lost.
“We were totally exposed, but we had a safety net to cover everything,” he said. “We’ll get over it – there’s always next Sunday.”
Industry analysts said casinos are getting hurt because the odds seem to be falling in favor of gamblers this year in sports bets.
At the Stardust in Las Vegas, for example, players in the casino’s 15-game parlay action, where bets are rolled over from game to game, no one had won it this season until just recently.
“It’s had to pay out an incredible five times in just the last eight weeks,” said casino analyst Roger Gros, editor of Global Gaming Business.
He said that NFL bets account for about $2 of every $3 wagered on all sports betting, or about $12 billion annually. That includes illegal street betting, online betting and casino action.
College football bets total about $6 billion year, while college basketball playoffs take in more than $2.5 billion a year.