Circa Sports announced Monday that it had surpassed $10 million in prize money for its annual Circa Survivor pro football pick 'em contest, meaning all entries accepted between now and Saturday's 2 p.m. local time deadline will increase the eight-figure prize pool.
It is the second straight year Circa will have a significant increase above its guaranteed prize money for Circa Survivor. It awarded nearly $9.3 million to four winners who survived a 20-pick gauntlet after initially guaranteeing an $8 million payout in 2023.
Circa Director of Operations Jeffrey Benson noted the milestone via social media Sunday morning and also pointed out that this week is usually when the most entries for both the Survivor and Pick 'Em contests are filed. If Circa was to match its final-week totals from last year, the prize money for this year's Survivor contest would be approximately $12.5 million.
The $16 million in combined guaranteed payouts this year for Circa Survivor and Circa Pick 'Em is up $2 million from last year.
For reference in the Monday-Saturday of the last week of Contest signups last season we did the following:
1,448 Circa Million entries
2,555 Circa Survivor entries https://t.co/3HhJl78AJa— Jeffrey Benson (@JeffreyBenson12) September 2, 2024
Still Significant Overlay Opportunity for Pick 'Em Contest
The "Pick 'Em" contest has $6 million in guaranteed prize money, but it will be a race to Saturday to see if Circa Sports will incur any overlays to cover the full $6 million. The current figure as of Monday morning, according to a press release, was $1.79 million. That means Circa needs 1,790 entries — each one costs $1,000 — to avoid an overlay.
Matching last year's 1,448 entries in the final week before Saturday's deadline would put the total amount of entries at 5,658, which would mean an overlay of $342,000 to make the pool whole, since Circa does not take any rake. That would continue a positive trend for Circa, which reported an overlay of $726,000 in 2023. That was a reduction by nearly half of the $1.3 million overlay Circa had to cover in 2022.
