Sports book venues were singing the blues last week when the longshot St. Louis Blues won the Stanley Cup from the Boston Bruins in game 7 of the series.
The Blues, who were once in last place, were considered a longshot and so the sports books were forced to pay out wins at long odds. Some casinos ended up taking bets at 300-1.
Golden Nugget sportsbook director Tony Miller characterized the results as “Read bad. Disaster. Probably the worst loss we’ve had since Leicester City.” That was an English Premier League team that won over huge odds in 2016.
Miller told the Las Vegas Review-Journal “If you’re ever at 300-1 on a team, no matter what sport, (the bettors) take the long shots. This was no different. You’ve got a last-place team that came from nowhere and is going to win the thing. It’s like if the (Miami) Marlins win or someone like that. All these long shots in every sport, if they come back and win, we’re going to lose. That’s the boat we’re in.”
Most of those 300-1 bets were made in January. Then the team started to rack up the wins and the odds fell steadily. But those bets had already been made. Most of those bets ranged from $20 to $50 but they added up.
Not all sportsbook operators did as badly as the Golden Nugget.
The Westgate only took one $20 bet at 300-1 odds. Its sports book director, John Murray, commented, “We don’t have any of the big hitters to talk about the way some of these other books do.” He added, “We don’t really have a lot of St. Louis fans staying with us. We didn’t really deal with that at all. We were just a small loser on the Blues.”
Murray added, “We won a good amount on the Conn Smythe Award (to the MVP of the Stanley Cup playoffs), and we actually ended up turning a decent profit. Not nearly as much as we would’ve if Boston had won, but it was a perfectly good profit overall when you factor in all the different markets.”
