It was a quiet weekend for Duffel Bag Boy — Las Vegas' most infamous deep-pocketed bettor this season — as he took a minor loss for the weekend.
Duffel Bag Boy, who earned his moniker thanks to his routine of walking into sportsbooks with a bag full of cash, has spent this college football season regularly betting five and six figures on parlays.
His lone win for the weekend was a $50,000 two-team parlay on Toledo (-19.5) over Ball State last Wednesday and Clemson (-39) over Louisville on Saturday. Both teams covered easily for a $180,000 win.
That win didn't cover his losses, however, as Duffel Bag Boy didn't get to the window with his three-team parlay that included the Minnesota on top of Toledo and Clemson. He also lost on a $100,000 two-team parlay with Boston College (-2) and San Diego State (-10) and a six-figure straight-bet on SDSU.
Sportsbooks Take A Hit In Week 9
Week 9 of the NFL season was not kind to the Vegas sportsbooks. Most of the locations that took the brunt of the losses were primarily on the Strip and tend to do more "tourist" action. That essentially means the predictable bets (favorites and public teams) are made there.
Now, before you go feeling bad for the books let's remember that they've had record profits at the books over the past few years and days that have this big of an impact anywhere in Las Vegas are becoming more and more rare.
Jay Rood, vice president of race and sports at MGM, told ESPN's David Purdum that this weekend featured the "top 10 all time worst Sundays I can remember."
Jeff Davis, Caesars' head of risk operations, told Purdum, "Today's outcomes have been less than ideal. I don't know where exactly it'll fall on our all-time list, but it's one of the worst NFL Sundays that I can remember."
Jason McCormick, the sportsbook director at Station Casinos, added to the chorus by calling it the worst Sunday of the season.
The Westgate SuperBook, which attracts less recreational action compared to other properties, also took a loss but compared to the other big books they ended up OK in the grand scheme of things.
"We definitely did lose for the day," Derek Wilkinson, a supervisor at the SuperBook said. "But not nearly as bad as some other books. Like MGM, for example, I think they take a lot more square action so when all those favorites cover, they get pretty beat up. We didn't even lose $100,000 today so we're considering ourselves lucky. We definitely did lose on parlays and teasers, but nothing too crazy."
Tim Fitzgerald, a supervisor at the South Point sportsbook, had a similar outlook, bad but not historic.
"I'm not going to use the words 'blood bath' or 'destroyed', it was a bad day, but I've seen plenty worse," Fitzgerald explained. "Over the past few years I tell people we usually have two really bad Sundays in the NFL each year, this was one of them but definitely no worse than that."
Fitzgerald said the Saints and Dolphins were their two big wins but they lost on a lot of parlays.
"It wasn't so much the teasers this time, which is often the culprit, it was definitely the parlays," Fitzgerald noted. "If any of the early games goes against the trend we don't get banged up nearly as badly. Any one of the Ravens, Browns, Bills, Lions, Bucs, or Redskins and that would have softened the blow. By the time we pulled up the late games on the computer we were essentially already dead because of so much two way action on the late games."
What softened the blow at both South Point and Westgate was continued unexplained sharp support for the Cleveland Browns. Smart money backing the Browns has been a headscratching theme around Vegas for three years running.
Wise guys are on the Browns. Hey, this time should be different than the last 40 times.
— Chris Andrews (@andrewssports) November 4, 2018
