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Jay Rood’s first two words during a Monday conversation pretty much summed up the current mood of Las Vegas sportsbooks.
“Favorites suck!” said Rood, vice president of race and sports for MGM Resorts.
It’s an understandable sentiment as Rood looks over the NFL sports betting landscape of the past few weeks. In November alone, chalk went 37-16-4 ATS, covering the number at a stout 69.8 percent clip. Over the last two weeks, favorites have gone 22-7-1 ATS, a 75.9 percent spread-covering rate, including 12-4 ATS this past weekend.
Bettors, especially public ones who traditionally love wagering on favorites, are cashing in big on this run. Thursday’s three Thanksgiving Day NFL games and the 11-game sled throughout the day Sunday pretty much summarized the past six weeks, in which favorites are 55-24-6 ATS (69.6 percent). The underdog Packers and Texans covering in the Sunday and Monday nighters kept an awful weekend for the books from being much worse.
But in some of these cases, there really isn’t much the sportsbooks can do.
“You’ve got a 17-point favorite, the Patriots, and they still cover. You’ve got a 14-point favorite, the Eagles, and they still cover,” Rood said in citing two Week 12 outcomes, while adding that the answer can’t just be to up the lines even more, because sharp buyback on the big ‘dogs could be harmful, too. “You’ve got to be careful.”
It’s definitely a delicate task to balance all the public money and the sharper action. And although the public loves to ride favorites, they did get one jolt Sunday – the 8.5-point underdog Bills upsetting the Chiefs – that kept a bad day for MGM books from being even worse.
“The public can always do the most damage. But at some point, the public is gonna take it in the shorts. Fortunately, they did with Kansas City,” Rood said. “To really crush us, they have to get it all right. Sunday was close to a complete disaster. But Buffalo outright was huge. The public was on Kansas City, and thankfully so.”
Nick Bogdanovich, director of trading for William Hill US, said his 100-plus shops around Vegas and throughout Nevada certainly weren’t immune to the favorite flu.
“This week was the worst. Thankfully, the Packers saved us from a complete beatdown,” Bogdanovich said, alluding to Green Bay covering as a 14-point pup in Sunday night’s 31-28 loss at Pittsburgh.
But Bogdanovich and all his peers understand this is cyclical.
“It’s not surprising. We won at an alarming rate early,” he said, pointing to favorites going just 35-53-1 ATS (39.8 percent) in the first six weeks of the NFL season. “It figured to swing to the players at some point.”
That point has now lasted six weeks. CG Technology sportsbooks, including Strip locations at The Cosmopolitan and Venetian, were in the red on three of four November Sundays. CG actually did worse on the Nov. 5 slate of NFL games than this past Sunday’s matchups, though bettors ruled the roost big-time on both days.
“The game that saved us (this week) was Arizona beating Jacksonville,” said Jason Simbal, vice president of risk management for CG. “It would have been quite a bit worse, specifically with parlays, if the Jags covered.”
In fact, pointspead parlays have created the biggest problem. When there are three or four surefire spread-covering teams week after week, parlay liability stacks up for the books and cash stacks up for the bettors.
“They’re riding the Patriots, the Steelers, the Eagles, the Vikings as of late, the Saints and the Rams. Then toss in whoever’s playing the Browns,” Rood said. “If three main teams are hitting and covering every week, it’s not too hard to pick a four-teamer and win consistently.
“Parlays against the spread are the ones that do the most damage. Moneyline parlays on $6 or $7 favorites, you put three teams together and it’s only paying 2/1. For us, knocking out the pointspread parlays is key. You can’t overcome 6/1, 10/1 or 20/1.”
All the books can hope for, as Bogdanovich noted, is the cyclical nature of the sports betting beast, while bettors hope favorites keep feeding that beast.
Patrick Everson is a Las Vegas-based senior writer for Covers. Follow him on Twitter: @Covers_Vegas.
