It’s basic to say now that we have a year behind us, but looking back at 2025, some betting decisions may have been… miscalculated.
Some examples:
Last season, DraftKings said it placed a $25,000 bet on the Las Vegas Raiders to win the Super Bowl at 100-1. The Raiders would not win the Super Bowl.
102 entries to Circa Survivor, a high-stakes NFL survivor competition run by a Las Vegas casino, did not submit their picks by the weekly deadline this season and were eliminated. The tournament buy-in was $1,000 and the prize pool was $18.7 million.
Kalshi Prediction Market noted that one of its clients invested $183,954 in social media influencer-turned-boxer Jake Paul to defeat vigorous two-time heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua. Paul was hospitalized with a broken jaw thanks to Joshua’s devastating right hand during the knockout victory. Live and learn, right?
This year hasn’t been a bad one for gamblers at all. There have been several betting success stories that have had bookmaking executives lamenting to shareholders about “customer-friendly results” or begging gambling regulators to allow them to void angle shooting contracts altogether. Despite these setbacks, the betting industry is expected to survive the up-to-date year.
As we reflect on the year in betting, we wish you fewer miscalculations in 2026.
The craziest bets of 2025
January 9: A DraftKings bettor placed a 50-cent 19-game college basketball bet at odds of +43,473,946. All 19 teams covered the spread; 17 of them came from compact conferences, including Stetson, Jacksonville and IU Indianapolis.
The 50-cent jackpot won $217,370.23.
January 28: A DraftKings bettor placed a $1,000 bet on Indiana Hoosiers quarterback Fernando Mendoza to win the Heisman Trophy at odds of 100-1. Eleven months later, in December, Mendoza received the Heisman Award, which resulted in a net winning of $100,000.
February 9: The Philadelphia Eagles defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX 40-22. BetMGM customers lost more money on the Super Bowl than on any other game in any sport in 2025, according to the bookmaker.
April 21: Sportsbooks began noticing an unusual spike in home run bets on Wednesday morning at the start of the MLB season. The bets were not on Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani. They involved Nick Castellanos, a journeyman outfielder for the Philadelphia Phillies and the subject of an Internet meme that has earned him a reputation for returning home on gigantic news days.
“We started looking around to see what was going on and we saw that the Pope had died,” recalled BetMGM’s Halvor Egeland.
Egeland said BetMGM rarely charges enough on a home run bet to adjust the odds, but it did that day, dropping Castellanos from +775 to +550. This didn’t leisurely down the action. By the end of the day, more bets had been placed on Castellanos’ homer than on any other team or player in all sports.
Castellanos went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts in the Phillies’ 5-4 loss to the Novel York Mets.
June 5: A bettor from Ohio with BetMGM placed a bet An $8 million bet on the heavily favored Oklahoma City Thunder, who defeated the Indiana Pacers in the NBA Finals at -700 odds.
The Thunder defeated the Pacers in seven games, with bettors net winning $1.42 million.
June 15: JJ Spaun shot 150-1 to win the US Open. Spaun had the best chance to win of any player since Phil Mickelson (200-1) won the 2021 PGA Championship.
June 24: An Arizona bettor using BetMGM placed three gigantic bets on the winner of the College Football Playoff:
$300,000 to Texas at 5-1 $200,000 at Penn State at +750 $115,000 for Clemson at 13-1
All three teams missed the CFP.
June 25: The Dallas Mavericks selected Cooper Flagg with the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA Draft. The Mavericks were 500-1 to select Flagg, the highest odds of any futures bet offered by DraftKings in 2026.
August 23: Heading into the college football season, North Carolina, under first-year coach Bill Belichick, attracted the same amount of money and wagering to win the national championship as Indiana on BetMGM Sportsbook. The Hoosiers finished the season undefeated and entered the CFP with the top seed, while the Tar Heels finished 4-8.
August 30: A DraftKings bettor picked the winner of all 15 MLB games this Saturday, who won $125,088.36 in a $5 15-game bet deal.
August 31: A FanDuel player followed beloved college football personality Lee Corso College Gameday final picks and won $1,317.18 in a six-game $10 giveaway that included outright wins over Florida State and Alabama. Corso retired from the series this year.
September 7: The Buffalo Bills staged a remarkable comeback by beating the Baltimore Ravens 41-40 on Sunday in the first week of the NFL season. According to the bookmaker, this transaction resulted in the largest winnings in any game for BetMGM customers this year. In an earnings call, DraftKings said the Bills-Ravens partnership had the biggest loss in the sportsbook’s history.
September 11: A bettor at Caesars Sportsbook risked $715,000 on +140 underdog Terence Crawford to defeat Canelo Alvarez and netted $985,000 as Crawford won by unanimous decision.
October 15: A Massachusetts bettor operating DraftKings placed 27 parlay bets centered on how many hits Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Nathan Lukes would have in the American League Championship Series game against the Seattle Mariners. The player risked $12,950 for a chance to win $934,147.83.
DraftKings has informed the Massachusetts Gaming Commission (MGC) that a technical error allowed a bettor to include Luke’s five-plus, six-plus, seven-plus and eight-plus hits during the ALCS in sports betting to boost the odds. Lukes had nine hits in the ALCS.
DraftKings told MGC it believes the player’s relative is among six customers in Novel Jersey who also placed a similar bet on Lukes, resulting in a $1.8 million winnings. Gaming regulators in Massachusetts and Novel Jersey rejected DraftKings’ request to void the bets.
November 2: A week after National Tight End Day, a bettor at Caesars Sportsbook bet on five tight ends and scored the first touchdown of his parlay series. Four of the five players – Theo Johnson of the Novel York Giants, Tyler Higbee of the Los Angeles Rams, Dalton Kincaid of the Bills and Sam LaPorta of the Detroit Lions – returned the win to the bettor, resulting in winnings of approximately $111,000.
“The customer bet on each combination of these five selections and bet $2.50 per leg, and the potential winnings were just under $2 million,” said Joey Feazel of Caesars Sportsbook. “Although the bettor missed all five, he hit four of five, allowing him to win over $111,000. A fantastic investment for the bettor.”
December 7: A Demanding Rock BET bettor placed a $1.20 bet involving all college basketball players, resulting in a payout of $344,902.81. According to the company, at +34,490,181, this is the highest ever odds for a successful deal at Demanding Rock BET.
December 8: A Fanatics bettor placed $1.47 million on a four-game NFL bet in Week 14, netting him $1.86 million, the sportsbook’s biggest winning bet of the year. Four legs: Rams money line over Arizona Cardinals; Green Bay Packers Moneyline over Chicago Bears; and Denver Broncos over Raiders and under at Pittsburgh Steelers-Ravens (alternate line).
December 14: The player successfully predicted that a player would score the first touchdown in five NFL games, turning a 10-cent winnings into a payout of $7,356.80.
Dana White has a unique insight into the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao rematch scheduled for September this year.
The two boxing icons will face each other 11 years after their first meeting, which Mayweather won by unanimous decision, and both are now within 50 points of each other.
Speaking at the Zuffa Boxing 04 post-fight press conference in which Jai Opetaia defeated Brandon Glanton for the promotion’s inaugural cruiserweight title, White was asked if he had any advice for the event at The Sphere.
“Who’s promoting? S**t. I wonder who’s paying for the production. They’re in for a large surprise. It’s incredibly high-priced. I wonder. Someone better call.”
Mayweather-Pacquiao 2 is directed by Manny Pacquiao Promotions with significant support from Netflix.
In September 2024, in a futuristic place, White organized the UFC 306 gala, the main attraction of which was the victory of Merab Dvalishvili over Sean O’Malley in the fight for the world bantamweight title. The “Noche UFC” event, which coincided with Mexico’s Independence Day weekend, was the first live sporting event held at the venue and generated record promotion.
“When you see what we did at Sphere, it’s like, I don’t know if it’ll ever happen again. We spent over $20 million on it and it was a one-of-a-kind night, it was a fucking amazing night. If my production team doesn’t win every fucking award available in the production, all those awards will be shit.”
This seems to be an appropriate venue for the upcoming rematch, which, although professionally sanctioned, is more about the spectacle than the sporting merits. Few matchups in sports can justify the scale of need. Even in 2026, Mayweather and Pacquiao will fit into this plan.
The criticism came when reporters asked about the IBF’s decision earlier in the week to withdraw recognition of Opetai’s title defense during fight week. The sanctioning body initially approved the fight before changing course shortly before the event, leaving the IBF title on the line.
Dana said the situation reflects issues he has noticed since starting his playing career.
“This sport is broken for a reason,” Dana said during the press conference. “They’re all a bunch of rinky-dink.”
White continued the criticism by describing those involved in running the sport.
“These people are bad at what they do,” Dana said.
Dana also noted that Opetaia had already paid the sanction fee before the IBF withdrew recognition of the title defense.
Dana said his early boxing experiences surprised him with how the sport works and how many of its problems remain unresolved.
White said Zuffa plans to exploit the same promotional model that helped build the UFC. This approach focuses on acquiring players that the organization considers among the best in their divisions and organizing regular events built around recognizable names.
Dana also pointed to the number of promoters and sanctioning bodies operating in boxing as one of the reasons the sport is struggling to solve many of its long-standing problems. Several organizations sanction world championship titles in the sport, often requiring separate approval and fees when belts are put on the line.
White argued that the structure created complications when trying to stage major fights. The IBF situation surrounding the Opetaia fight was one of the first disputes between Zuffa Boxing and the classic sanctioning body since the promotion entered the sport.
The comments reflected Dana’s view that many of boxing’s problems stem from the way the sport is run.
Fabio Wardley had hoped to face Oleksandr Usyk in 2026, but Ukraine’s unified heavyweight ruler instead opted to fight Dutch kickboxer Rico Verhoeven on the left wing.
However, Usyk responded by vacating the WBO world title – as a result, Wardley was elevated to the world title – and he was linked with a return to fighting overseas in possible meetings with Deontay Wilder or Andy Ruiz Jr.
Instead, two weeks ago it was announced that Usyk would travel to Cairo, Egypt, to defend his WBC heavyweight title against Verhoeven, who boasts a professional boxing record of just 1-0.
In an interview with Boxing News, Wardley admitted that the news was “disappointing” for him and expressed hope that Usyk would return to “real” professional boxing soon.
“I think so [my reaction] he was just like the rest of the boxing world [the announcement] was quite disappointing. I understand that he has earned the right to do whatever he wants, but at least I expected that to be the case [against] energetic boxer.
“I don’t actually know much about Verhoeven in terms of his level of quality, but I expected it [the fight] to be against a professional boxer of decent caliber, but if you’re not, that’s fine, do your thing.
I hope he returns to real professional boxing against some of the top elites.”
The Usyk-Verhoeven gala will take place on Saturday, May 23 at the Pyramids of Giza, and Verhoeven has a chance to become the fastest world heavyweight champion in boxing history.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.
Opinions & Features1 year ago
MMA1 year ago
Results1 year ago
Results1 year ago
Video1 year ago
Analysis11 months ago
Video1 year ago
Results1 year ago