There’s one thing being confident in your betting selections, but quite another to stake $3.1 million – or approximately £2.4 million – on them.
One punter in the United States was so sure that the Philadelphia Eagles would be the Carolina Panthers in the NFL this past weekend, he wagered the eye-watering sum – believed to be one of the largest single bets ever taken – on Philly to prevail.
Given their odds of just 1/7, the individual stood to win just $440,000 (£345,000) from their wager.
Everything was going smoothly until… well, it wasn’t, and the punter came within a whisker of losing their £2.4 million on one single play.
Heart Skipped a Beat
The bet was placed with Circa Sports in Las Vegas (APK, Wikimedia Commons)
The insane bet was struck at Circa Sports, a chain of bookmakers in Las Vegas that welcomes ‘whales and sharps’ to wager with them where they might otherwise be limited or even turned away by other firms.
As the anonymous individual sat down to watch the game, he or she would have been nervous from the word go.
Philadelphia quarterback Jalen Hurts struggled to get anything going for his team, and by the end of the first quarter Carolina led 3-0 courtesy of an Eddy Pinheiro field goal.
The Eagles got their act together in the second quarter, with Hurts and DeVonta Smith crossing into the endzone, but the Panthers also scored a touchdown of their own through Tommy Tremble, and so Philly led by a thin 14-10 margin at half time.
Would their greater class show in the second period? Not exactly: Chuba Hubbard’s touchdown was the only score in the third quarter, meaning that with just 15 minutes left on the clock Carolina led 17-14.
And the punter, watching on from wherever they were, no doubt felt that their heart was in their mouth.
A similarly cagey fourth quarter was punctuated by a two-point rush from Saquon Barkley and a touchdown from Grant Calcaterra, putting the Eagles 22-14 ahead.
However, a Panthers score would have tied the game or even won it for the underdog, and when their quarterback Bryce Young took possession of the pigskin in striking distance of the Eagles endzone, our humble punter must have feared the worst.
Young looked up and threw a pass to the charging Xavier Legette, who had crossed into the endzone. For a split second, he seemingly had possession of the ball, before it squirmed from his grasp and the pass was adjudged to have been incomplete.
Oh my goodness…. incomplete.
📺: FOX pic.twitter.com/jiFzpyWSIE
— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) December 8, 2024
And so the Eagles were declared the victors, and the punter in question took home his or her six-figure payday. But given the heart-stopping drama they had to sit through, you wonder if they’ll ever be tempted to place a wager of a similar size ever again…
Big Game Hunting
In the UK, it would be almost impossible to place a £2.4 million bet on a single outcome – the stake and payout limits enforced by most bookmakers operating on British soil would see to that.
There’s similar ceilings when betting online in the United States too, but when wagering in person – and especially so on the Las Vegas strip – the general rules often go out of the window.
It’s extraordinary that a bookmaker took a bet of this size on a game like the Eagles vs Panthers, given that the point spread (14 in favour of Philadelphia) was so vast that it would have been the biggest upset victory in four seasons of NFL action had Carolina taken that final touchdown chance.
The owner of Circa Sports, Derek Stevens, has since confirmed that the £2.4 million bet was the biggest that the firm had ever taken, while there’s no documented evidence that any other bookmaker has taken more on a regular season bet.
However, when the Super Bowl rolls around, once again common sense is thrown to the wolves.
It’s thought that the biggest bet in American history was placed on Super Bowl XLIV, which unfolded in 2010. One plucky punter, the infamous Billy Walters, is said to have wagered $6 million (£4.7 million) on the New Orleans Saints to win with a handicap… which they did in convincing fashion 31-17.
Another heavyweight of the American sports betting scene, Jim ‘Mattress Mack’ McIngvale, sprung into action with a $9.5 million (£7.4 million) bet on the Cincinnati Bengals to win Super Bowl LVI… they duly lost to the Los Angeles Rams 20-23.
However, there was a happy ending for the bedroom furniture salesman, who banked a whopping $75 million in 2022 across a number of bets backing the Houston Astros to win the World Series of baseball.