There is one bettor out there who didn’t wait for Super Bowl week to declare his intentions. And he went big as in huge.
BetMGM has taken a $2.3M wager on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The wager was on the Bucs +3.5 (-115). If Tampa Bay covers the spread against the Kansas City Chiefs, the bettor would win a net of $2 million.
According to company spokesperson Elisa Richardson, the bet was placed on BetMGM’s mobile app and is the largest Super Bowl wager any U.S. sportsbook had reported as of Friday morning.
🚨 Major Wager Alert 🚨
A bettor in Vegas just placed a $2,300,000 bet on the Bucs (+3.5)
The wager would win $2 mil 😳 pic.twitter.com/Es8JdFXugi
— BetMGM 🦁 (@BetMGM) January 29, 2021
The wager went in the opposite direction of most of the early action on the game, which has favored the Kansas City Chiefs, who are looking to go back-to-back.
“This was a bet we were very happy to receive,” Jason Scott, vice president of trading for BetMGM, told ESPN. “We had previously written several other six-figure bets, all on Kansas City, and the public is certainly behind Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes.”
The Chiefs remained consensus 3-point favorites and were attracting 74% of the point-spread bets at Caesars Sportsbook by William Hill. FanDuel and DraftKings also reported lopsided action on the Chiefs, with greater than 75% of the early money backing the defending champions at each sportsbook.