One of the nation’s highest-grossing sportsbooks maintains a seemingly unprecedented stretch of favorable results for the sports betting public is a fluke.
Key Takeaways
- DraftKings attributes recent bettor-friendly results to randomness, despite U.S. sports bettors outperforming historical averages.
- Favorites and overs hitting at unusually high rates, compounded by the popularity of single-game parlays and limited options on unders.
- Despite calls to adjust pricing models, DraftKings maintains confidence in traditional bookmaking principles.
U.S. sports bettors have fared far better than historical averages in three of the past six months. NFL favorites winning at recent record highs in October and December 2024 led to big wins for bettors.
Outcomes tipped back in the books’ favor in January and February, padded by favorable outcomes in the Super Bowl, perennially the nation’s most-wagered upon individual sporting event. That shifted back to the bettors again in March as higher seed NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament teams won at their highest rate since at least 1984.
DraftKings CEO Jason Robins said during his company’s first-quarter earnings call Friday this unusually strong run by favorites was not indicative of a larger trend.
“We have analyzed, as we always do, everything thoroughly, and we are 100% confident that these are random outcomes,” Robins said.
Big losses from favorites
The U.S. betting public tends to back favorites and overs. This gives sportsbooks an advantage when underdogs and unders hit.
This trend has been accelerated by the proliferation of single-game parlays.
Bettors are more likely to stack together favorites and overs, specifically around individual player props, where many books limit or don’t offer under certain levels. When favorites or overs hit at unusually high levels, this compounds the losses for the books.
NFL favorites won 75% or more of their games in 10 out of 18 weeks in the 2024 season, the highest such clip since at least 1983. With March Madness favorites also winning at high rates, even with fewer individual player prop options, it led to significant losses for the sportsbooks bottom lines.
Among all major publicly traded sportsbooks, the 2024 NFL season and 2025 NCAA tournament led to a roughly $1.5-billion loss in projected revenue in just the past six months.
Staying the course
This run has increased speculation that sportsbooks pricing models must fundamentally adjust.
U.S. sports betting has grown from a handful of brick-and-mortar sportsbooks at Nevada casinos to a $150-billion nationwide industry since the Supreme Court struck down the federal wagering ban in May 2018. DraftKings, FanDuel, and other sportsbooks now offer tens of thousands of new wagers, including a growing number in-play options.
Parlays, and single-game parlays in particular, have eclipsed traditional point spread, moneyline, and totals bets as the books’ biggest profit generators. With the public inclined to bet favorites and overs, and now able to do so more easily than ever, questions arise if lines need to be shaded to prevent such massive losses when these outcomes occur.
The shift in sports, particularly college athletics, has also driven speculation. NCAA student-athletes’ ability to receive compensation and retain eligibility has led some to wonder if favorites’ high winning percentage is partially due to wealthier programs' ability to acquire better players.
"Customer friendly sports outcomes", mostly around March Madness favorites winning at a record rate, cost DraftKings an estimated $170 million in revenue and $111 million in AEBITDA, per earnings release
— Ryan Butler (@ButlerBets) May 8, 2025
Though the nature of American sports – and sports betting – is changing, the sportsbooks are confident the fundamentals of bookmaking remain the same.
Robins said that there has not been a paradigm shift in bookmakers’ ability to determine a favorite or underdog. DraftKings and other books may have to adjust their lines, Robins said, but that doesn’t impact a game’s outcome.
"A structural hold and actual hold should converge over time, but part of what makes sports compelling – and why people watch and bet – is the inherent randomness of outcomes,” Robins said. “That unpredictability enhances the customer experience.
“There will be stretches, even multiple quarters in a row, with unfavorable results, but the opposite can also occur. We'll just have to wait and see if things normalize, and I expect they will, because they always seem to."
