The public betting masses are having a historically good season with NFL odds. FanDuel admitted as much Tuesday when it announced estimated U.S. revenue for 2024 would be $370 million lower than its previous guidance.
That previous guidance estimated revenue between $6.05 billion and $6.25 billion. The adjusted estimate is $5.78 billion.
“Following our Q3 earnings report on Nov. 12, continued strong U.S. player momentum has been offset by a period of very unfavorable U.S. sports results across the remainder of November and December, primarily on NFL parlay and same-game-parlay outcomes,” FanDuel said in a news release. “The 2024-2025 NFL season to date has been the most customer-friendly since the launch of online sports betting, with the highest rate of favorites winning in nearly 20 years.”
And when favorites win, the overwhelming majority of bettors win, as recreational bettors far outnumber sharp bettors. Not just in population, but in the total amount of bets placed and the total dollars wagered on those bets.
Therefore, FanDuel Sportsbook was hardly alone this season. Longtime Vegas oddsmaker Jay Kornegay, now the SuperBook’s vice president of marketing, said every sportsbook can relate to FanDuel’s situation.
“Normally, the NFL is our bread and butter. The parity is how we make our living. And we had that parity for the first month of the season. But it never returned,” Kornegay said. “The key decisions we needed to win, it felt like those were going against us three, four, five times a week.
“We were incredibly unlucky at times. Some of the games that went against us, we were looking at each other in the back room like, ‘Did that just happen?’ We had more than our share of those during the season.”
By the time December rolled around, the public bettors’ run was at full steam, and the pendulum never really swung back, as it normally does during the NFL season. The run continued through December, making FanDuel’s shortfall no real surprise.
“Stevie Wonder could see that fact, based on what’s happened on the field. It’s not rocket science. The general public is winning,” veteran oddsmaker Rex Beyers said. “In the first few weeks, you had five or six key favorites losing outright. Once things calmed down, none of the big favorites got beat. Nobody lost for like two straight months.”
Kornegay mirrored Beyers’ sentiments while reiterating the heightened lack of parity in the NFL this season.
“It felt like there were the elite teams, and they never came back to the pack,” Kornegay said. “And the bottom teams never competed to a point where they got public interest.
“There was too much chalk. Chalk was coming through, week in and week out.”
