Bettors strike back in Week 4
By Micah Roberts
VegasInsider.com
One week after the sports books scooped all chips, bettors struck back in Week 4 action as they collectively keyed on the winning sides of the Cowboys, Broncos and then the Steelers in the late-night finale.
"The morning was great with the Bills, Seahawks, Bears, Falcons and Texans," said Station Casinos sports book director Jason McCormick. "The afternoon, not so much. The Boncos were very bad and the Saints/Chargers 'over' was bad too."
McCormick said his 19 books were were sitting on a winning day up that point, but all the risk left over from the first 13 games was tied into the Steelers.
Every book in the city was sitting in the same boat with the late game showing a huge risk with two and three team parlays waiting to cash with Pittsburgh.
"It's all coming down to this last game," said MGM Resorts VP of race and sports Jay Rood while the Steelers were up 22-0 in the first quarter.
The side they all needed was the Chiefs, who lost 43-14 a Pittsburgh with quarterback Ben Roethlisberger tossing five TD passes and running back Le'Veon Bell making his season debut with 144 yards rushing.
"Gave away every cent on this game. And it was a lot of cents," said William Hill's head bookmaker Nick Bogdanovich.
William Hill's 108 sports books across Nevada reported that 88 percent of all tickets written on the point-spread were on Denver and that 83 percent of the cash was on them as well. It was the largest total for each on the day, and by a substantial margin. Pittsburgh had 73 percent of the tickets written on then and Dallas had 72 percent. That popular three-teamer at 6/1 odds did the books in.
The books were fortunate that they got a few early games to go their way or they'd be paying out lots of similar six-team parlays at 40/1 odds.
The Bears (+3) finally won a game this season beating the popular Lions, 17-14. The Bills (+7) gave the Patriots their first loss and it came in shutout fashion, 16-0 in Foxboro. New England gets quarterback Tom Brady back next week as it visits Cleveland.
On the surface, the Rams (+8.5) winning 17-13 at Arizona might seem like a good spot for the books, but 53 percent of the tickets written at William Hill were taking the points. They realized that something is wrong with the Cardinals who dropped to 1-3, along with Carolina -- they played each other in the NFC Championship game last season Panthers. Going back to last season, The Cardinals have gone 1-6 agains the spread in their last seven games. The Rams had the largest money-line payout of the day +375.
When the favorites go 7-7 on the day, it's usually a good mix for the books to have a nice day. And when all seven of those 'dogs covering win outright it's also usually good news just because that means several popular teasers and big money-line parlays were killed. But the Denver-Pittsburgh combination was just too much to overcome.
Let's chalk one up for the bettors as most books broke even or lost a little bit on Sunday.