In 1992, a bettor placed 10,000 dollars on the Dallas Cowboys to win the Super Bowl. They did. The payout was roughly 820,000 dollars. The bettor spent that money on a house, which is the sensible thing to do with a lucky strike.
In 2015, a man named Jimmy Vaccaro watched a client place 2.5 million dollars on the Denver Broncos to win Super Bowl 50. The Broncos won 24-10. The sportsbook lost 4 million dollars. This is what that loss looked like: one man's belief in a football team translated into a small company's entire annual profit disappearing in one afternoon.
The Size of the Wins
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The 2015 Super Bowl 50 play mentioned above stands as one of the largest single NFL futures bets ever recorded at a casino. The size was unusual. The team was favored. The outcome was still unlikely enough that the sportsbook took the other side of the trade.
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In 2017, a bettor wagered 300,000 dollars on the New England Patriots at Super Bowl odds of roughly 3 to 1. The Patriots won. The payout was approximately 1.2 million dollars. The bettor became the kind of person who has very strong opinions about football.
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In 2014, a bettor placed 1 million dollars on the Seattle Seahawks to reach the Super Bowl at 5 to 1 odds. The Seahawks made it. The win was 5 million dollars. The bettor's next decision was presumably difficult.
Why These Bets Happened
Large bets on NFL futures happen for a few reasons. One: the bettor has access to capital and strong conviction about a team. Two: the sportsbook has made a mistake in the line. Three: the bettor is an experienced operator who understands the value in a particular matchup at a particular moment.
Most large futures bets are made by professionals. They have models. They have historical data. They place the bet because their analysis suggests the line is wrong. Sometimes their analysis is right. Sometimes luck and analysis line up, and a sportsbook pays out millions of dollars in a single transaction.
Fours bets are sometimes made by amateurs who had one good feeling about a team and the money to act on it. These bets almost never work out. When they do, the person involved tends to stop betting shortly thereafter, which is the smart move.
The Business Side
Sportsbooks do not mind losing individual bets. They mind losing large bets they did not expect. The 2.5 million dollar play on Denver hurt because it was larger than expected and because the public had also backed Denver heavily. The sportsbook was overexposed to one outcome.
This is why sportsbooks employ risk managers. These people monitor large bets and adjust the line if too much money is moving in one direction. A smart risk manager would have reduced Denver odds as the money came in. But in 2015, online sports betting was less sophisticated than it is today. Risk management was less precise.
Now, the largest bets are sometimes flagged before they are even placed. A casino will contact a bettor who tries to place a multi-million dollar NFL futures bet and ask whether they are sure, just to confirm no accident has occurred. If confirmed, the casino may still accept the bet if they have the capital to cover it.
The Aftermath
Winners of very large bets face a strange problem: what do you do with a sudden fortune that was obtained through a single prediction? Some invest it. Some buy property. Some lose it back to the same sportsbooks that paid them. The human relationship to sudden money is complicated. The human relationship to sudden money obtained through gambling is even more complicated.
The bets themselves live in sportsbook history as the ones that got away. Every sportsbook has them: the bet they thought was foolish that won anyway.
