The 2025 NFL Draft will get underway in less than a week from Green Bay, Wisconsin, with QB Cam Ward the heavy favorite to go No. 1 (-10000 at BetMGM; a $100 wager wins $1). But unlike the Super Bowl a few months ago when oddsmakers were looking forward to the biggest betting event of the year, many are dreading this coming Thursday. The reason?
As sportsbooks in Nevada won a record $22.1 million on Super Bowl LIX in February — and have only lost two Super Bowls since 1991 — booking the NFL Draft has generally been a losing proposition for oddsmakers. And it has been a winning proposition for sharp bettors, who tend to make up the majority of the dollars wagered.
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“Bookmakers hate the draft,” Jeff Benson, Circa Sports director of operations, told Yahoo Sports via direct message on X. “It is tons of work for no gain, and we have zero chance to win. We torch five to six figures a year on [it].”
Why do bookmakers hate booking the NFL Draft and sharp bettors love it? Is the opportunity for sharp bettors now gone? And if it’s such a losing proposition, why do books even offer it at all?
Yahoo Sports asked five oddsmakers and a few sharp bettors to find out.
The 2020 NFL Draft changed things
Betting on the NFL Draft had long been a part of the offshore world, but it was finally approved to be offered in Nevada in 2017 — the one state in the U.S. at that time with legal sports betting — and the number of bets available to be offered was expanded in 2018.
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But it wasn’t until the unique 2020 NFL Draft, with the sports world shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, that sportsbooks fully utilized that expanded menu to offer bettors a wide variety of options, turning the draft into a true betting event. The draft came into focus on sports betting shows, podcasts and gambling X (then Twitter) because there wasn’t any other handicapping to be done.
In this still image from video provided by the NFL, commissioner Roger Goodell speaks from his home in Bronxville, New York, during the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft on April 23, 2020. (Photo by NFL via Getty Images)
(Handout via Getty Images)
“I started betting the NFL Draft the COVID year, and that year was very unique because there were no reporters with access to teams,” Rob Pizzola, a respected bettor and CEO of The Hammer Network, told Yahoo Sports. “I put so much work into that draft, going back to previous drafts for each general manager and seeing what their tendencies were. It was like a logic puzzle more than anything else. I actually modeled out the draft, doing it probabilistically. It was one of the best sports experiences of my life.”
Inherent in that joy for Pizzola was that it was a “pretty lucrative” endeavor, in part due to hitting on tackle Mekhi Becton going No. 11 to the New York Jets at anywhere between 11-1 and 14-1 odds.
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“There was nothing going on in 2020, so people were firing as much of their bankroll into the NFL Draft,” Matt Freedman, head of betting at Matthew Berry’s Fantasy Life and a draft bettor since 2018, told Yahoo Sports.
Sportsbooks offered a wide menu of wagers in 2021 as well, including putting some markets up much earlier — and again didn’t do well.
“The first year we put a bunch of stuff up probably at the end of March, a month ahead, and it was a complete debacle,” Ed Salmons, vice president of risk at the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook, said.
The combination of putting up a larger number of markets to bet into, along with putting them up earlier was a double whammy for oddsmakers, as it gave those sharper bettors more time and options to utilize good information.
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“Dealing with any draft market, really for most places, it’s not a matter of whether you win or lose, it’s just a question of how much you lose,” Thomas Gable, sportsbook director at The Borgata — a BetMGM book — in Atlantic City, said. “The sharper customers are going to beat you to information. The question is, ‘What markets can you have to attract handle and is it handle that you want overall?’”
Christian Cipollini, a BetMGM trader, said the book nationally had won only one draft (last year) in the six years he’d been with the company and that the draft was “a market that we generally don’t win at.”
Why is the NFL Draft so difficult to book?
Unlike a normal game decided on the field of play — like the Super Bowl — the inherent challenge in booking the NFL Draft for oddsmakers is that it’s an information game. And the oddsmakers rarely have that information first.
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“The draft has never been an easy proposition to book because it doesn’t rely on power ratings,” Johnny Avello, sportsbook director at DraftKings, told Yahoo Sports. “It isn’t this team versus this team, factor in home-field advantage, etc. It’s all about information.”
The draft is trickier for sportsbooks as well because of a patchwork of rules and regulations among the many states offering wagering on it. Some states don’t offer betting on the draft at all (New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia among them), while in others like Nevada, markets must be off the board 24 hours before the draft begins Thursday evening. And in certain states, draft betting can even be offered live.
“You need to have people booking it and following it, it’s non-stop,” Salmons noted. “That’s all you do [if you’re assigned to it], you can’t be booking games. Our handle will be 96% sharp money, if not higher. Even the week of the draft, it’s crazy how much stuff changes.”
With an information market, unlike a sporting contest, once credible information comes out and is wagered on, the market can move quickly — and no money will come back on the other side. And that information could come as quickly as one post on X from Adam Schefter.
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For example, let’s say the Kansas City Chiefs were 11-point favorites against the Carolina Panthers and Patrick Mahomes was ruled out, so the line shifted and closed Chiefs -4. If a bettor knew Mahomes wouldn’t be playing and placed a wager on Panthers +11, he’d have a great number on the game — but he still could lose the wager if the Chiefs won 30-3.
Miami quarterback Cam Ward passes during the school’s NFL pro day March 24, 2025, in Coral Gables, Fla. (AP Photo/Michael Laughlin, File)
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
In the NFL Draft, if it’s known that Ward is going No. 1 overall to the Tennessee Titans and the odds are -200, once they move to -400, -600, etc., there won’t be any money coming back the other way on another player. And it’s a certainty that the bet will hit, unlike a game being played on the field.
“Unless your handle is so big that you can incorporate the sharp bets with square money, it’s tough,” Salmons said.
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Put another way from Pizzola: “If Connor McDavid is going to be out for the Edmonton Oilers and I bet into the market, they can move the price significantly and get someone to bet the other side.”
Last year’s draft was a good one for sportsbooks, and Will Levis in 2023 provided a big win for books and an example of the volatility of the draft betting markets. Levis went from 40-1 odds to +400 to be drafted No. 1 overall on DraftKings on the Tuesday before the 2023 NFL Draft based off a single Reddit post. Liability on Levis skyrocketed in several other markets, but Bryce Young ended up going No. 1 and sportsbooks cleaned up.
“We had a ton of liability on Levis,” Cipollini recalled. “If he had gone where the last-minute change was coming, we would’ve taken a good loss.”
Booking the NFL Draft also highlights the differences in resources between smaller operations and national books, which have bigger teams to monitor social media, mock drafts and everything in between.
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“We’re fortunate that the timing works out well,” Cipollini noted. “Now that March Madness is over, our NFL traders are essentially scrollers on X. Instead of looking at spreadsheets, they’re looking at mock drafts. There is some degree of modeling, but it completely changes how they [make odds].”
DraftKings is one of the few books that offers a wide menu of NFL Draft markets and live betting in some states.
“The live part, you just have to stay on top of it,” Avello said. “Once it starts, at that point it’s easier than the pre-draft betting. I think we’ve gotten pretty good at it. We’re comfortable with it. We have not only the NFL team on it, but a lot of eyes on it at all times.”
So why offer NFL Draft betting at all?
If NFL Draft betting is a losing proposition for sportsbooks and only generates a total handle somewhere between a baseball game and Sunday 4 p.m. ET NFL game, depending on the book, why offer it at all?
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There are a few reasons, first among them being that sportsbooks feel in a competitive U.S. sports betting market, if they don’t then a competitor will. Or as Benson put it, putting out NFL Draft betting markets is “a necessary evil.”
It’s also another method to generate potential new customers or retain existing ones who love the NFL and are waiting for its return in a few months. And for different sportsbooks, even if it’s generally a loss leader, it’s worth it in the long run to keep customers happy.
“It does take a ton of action,” Cipollini said. “While the sharps tend to clean up, the public is very much in there betting with them. It takes too much interest for us to scrap it.”
Sportsbooks aren’t in the business of making the same mistakes twice and have also learned their lesson from years ago and taken measures to mitigate their NFL Draft betting risk. They now open the majority of markets much closer to the start of the NFL Draft, have much lower (and stricter) limits on wagers and post fewer betting options.
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“I think in the 2021 NFL Draft, I had over 300 different bets, which was an unreal number,” Freedman said. “But because the books got killed in 2020 and 2021, I don’t see the incentive for them to revert back to those wide-open markets. What we have now is pretty representative of what we’ll have going forward. I would say it’s dried up for professionals.”
Freedman pointed out that he has no more than 20 bets on this year’s draft currently and has changed his strategy to bet more the day or week of the draft, rather than putting a ton of energy getting money down weeks or months in advance.
“For a while when sports betting was coming online in a bunch of states, operators were putting NFL Draft markets out there to keep up with the other operators,” Gable said. “It was a game of chicken, who was going to say, ‘No more’ first. I think we’re moving to a point where books are going to say it’s not worth it.”
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Whatever the publicly stated reason, the bigger moneymaking opportunities are likely gone for sharper bettors in the NFL Draft — and are unlikely to come back.
“The market is basically nuked at this point,” Pizzola said. “You have to get the average NFL bettor on board with betting the draft, and it’s just a really bad time of year to get someone interested in the NFL with everything else going on. I don’t think the public betting appetite is ever getting there.”
