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David Purdum
Football bettors in Nevada beat the sportsbooks out of a net $2.1 million in December, the first monthly loss during the NFL regular season for the state’s bookmakers in 12 years.
It’s only the 13th losing month on football bets during the regular season in the state’s history and the largest net loss on football since November 2012, when the sportsbooks lost $5.3 million on bets on the NFL and college football, according to Nevada Gaming Control.
Favorites, always popular with the betting public, won 76.7% of games outright in December, the highest winning percentage for the month since 2005 and fourth-highest in the Super Bowl era. The chalk covered the spread in 59% of games during the month, the fifth-best mark in the Super Bowl era.
Overall, in December, Nevada sportsbooks won a net $15.0 million, almost all of it coming on bets on basketball.
The rough December capped an up-and-down regular season for Nevada sportsbooks. The books kicked off the season by winning a net $80.9 million in an upset-filled September, the most-lucrative month ever in state history.
The tide turned in the closing months of the football season, with the upsets drying up and favorites heating up. In January, Flutter, the parent company of U.S. sportsbook FanDuel, said “unfavorable US sports results” specifically on NFL parlays caused it to drop its revenue guidance for by $390 million
“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,” the company said in a release.
Despite the rocky regular season, sportsbooks remain open and are taking bets on the Super Bowl, the biggest single-game betting event in the U.S. Consulting firm Eilers & Krejcik Gaming estimates $1.5 billion will be bet on the Super Bowl with U.S. sportsbooks, a 20% year-over-year increase.