DraftKings has announced it will bring back its early win promotion, this time targeting the NBA.
The promo is expected to run every day for the rest of the season — or until it gets pulled.
When DraftKings had the promotion available for the NFL earlier this season, I made picks on every game.
A $100 per game bettor would have been up a profit of $1,050 for a total of $3,000 risked. That’s an ROI of 35%.
This promotion was also live for Game 1 of the 2022 NBA Finals, in which our bet won as well.
Here's how the promotion works for this year:
- Place one (1) pre-game moneyline bet per day and if the team you choose leads by 10 points or more at any time in the game, your bet wins
- Bet will be settled as a winner when your team goes up 10 points
- If your team never goes up by 10 points, you can still win your bet. In that event, regular moneyline rules go into effect
- You must attach the token to your wager in order to apply the promotion
- VIP bettors or those with Diamond status have maximum wagers of $500. Others have max bets of $200, $100 or $50
The general principles?
- Wager on underdogs as i went into last year and you can check out the math behind it here (can you add link to the tweet)
- Target games with high over/unders – the more points scored in a game the more likely there is to have been a 10 point comeback in the game as a 10 point lead means less when more points are scored. Statistically, the numbers back this up as there is a positive correlation between points scored in a game and likelihood of a 10 point comeback.
- Pick moneylines that are better priced than other sportsbooks
For point one, the worse a team is, the more positive expected value this promotion provides.
In the NFL, teams below .500 saw an increase in win probability of roughly 8.4% as a result of this promotion. Meanwhile, teams .500 and above only saw a 5.5% probability bump.
28 out of the 30 NFL games we targeted were bets on the underdog.
For point two: games with more points are positively correlated with blown 10 point leads. When more points are scored, lead changes are abundant and scores are fluid. Historical data indicates as such.
For point three: finding good prices relative to other books is paramount to maximizing expected value. While this point isn't as important as the other two, when all things are equal, I may defer to the better priced pick on account of this principle.
