When Vegas sportsbooks formulate a betting line, you can bet that they do so very diligently. Research, trends, tendencies, and a whole lot more are behind each one. The nature of betting dictates that you have good weeks, and you have bad weeks.
In Week 9 of the NFL for Vegas, it was a bad week. Actually, it was a historically bad week to be a bit more specific.
Oddsmakers pay very close attention to the ways bettors tend to lean after a line has been formulated. And when it came to Week 9, the favorites seemed to be ruling the day. In particular, Vegas said that Denver, Detroit, Houston, Chicago, Seattle, and Baltimore were all popular choices in the early afternoon wave of games kicking off at 1 pm ET.
All were favored in their respective games as well. And not only did they all win, they covered the betting lines.
Ok, so some favorites won? What’s the big deal? Why is it devastating to sportsbooks on this particular day?
Well, the answer looks to lie in the types of wagers that bettors are putting down. Jimmy Vaccaro, a Las Vegas Sports Betting Insider, said that arguably the biggest reason is the number of tickets that are betting parlays.
A parlay, for those of you who don’t know, links multiple games together with the potential for big payouts. All games on the ticket have to be won for the parlay to win, so it’s obviously difficult. But when the favorites tend to win, and bettors go with those favorites, more parlays are hit. Bettors can lay down $5-$50 parlay wagers and profit 10 or 20 times that or more depending on how many teams and games they choose to link together.
Vaccaro said that parlays have gone from 25 percent of the wagers made, up to 75 percent of the wagers made, because bettors see the lower initial bet for the really high payout, despite the larger risk.
As an example, one Vegas sportsbook paid out $15,000 to a bettor who placed a $5 wager on a 12-team parlay.
Add that all together, and Vegas had a day like they did yesterday.
And this all happened before the Monday Night Football game later tonight with the Eagles taking on the Saints. Typically, we see players who perhaps lost, try to gain back some money on Monday Night. It will be interesting to see the number of bets taken and the money exchanged for this match up to see how Vegas comes out. You have to think that they are concerned, and would like to get some of this back.
As it stands now, New Orleans is a three-point favorite at home over Philadelphia. If the Saints win the game and cover the line in the process, that would be yet another favorite to win against the spread this week.