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The NFL Draft has long been one of the most important days on the sporting calendar, but it’s now also one of the biggest gambling holidays of the year.
And while sportsbooks generally love the tentpole events on the schedule, like the Super Bowl, the Masters, or a Game 7 in the playoffs, they don’t feel the same way about the NFL Draft.
“In my six years at BetMGM, last year was the first time we won at the NFL Draft,” Christian Cippolini, senior trading manager at BetMGM Sportsbook, said. “And we barely won.”
The draft has become big business in the betting industry, but it’s also a unique event where the bookmakers and bettors are directly competing with one another to get to the same information first.
And that information could come from a number of different sources at any given time.
A recent example is when Todd McShay, one of the most trusted experts when it comes to the NFL Draft, said that he believes Jaxson Dart could be selected ahead of Shedeur Sanders.
That prognostication completely upended the betting market.
“We’ve taken a lot of different bets on a lot of different teams to draft Sanders,” Cippolini explained. “His draft range could be anywhere from the top three to 21 with the Steelers, and there would be a few teams that would be a problem for us.”
Another complicated part of setting a market for the draft is that you’re not just handicapping what general managers and the front office staff are thinking, but also what they’re being told to do by their boss – the team’s owner.
One such case is the Dallas Cowboys.
Jerry Jones is not known for a hands-off approach, nor is he shy to surprise, and that is something that the public is betting on this week.
“We’ve taken a lot of action on the Cowboys to pick a quarterback with their first pick at 150/1,” Cippolini said. “We’ve got the best price in the market for that bet, and we’re comfortable with it because of Dak Prescott’s cap hit, but you can imagine a world where Shedeur Sanders falls to the Cowboys and they take him.
“That would be a very bad thing for us. If the Cowboys take a quarterback, that alone would make the day a loss for the sportsbook.”
Bookmakers, bettors, and pundits are not just trying to get into the mind of data-driven, logical executives, but also trying to handicap what shoot-from-the-hip tycoons are telling them to think.
“We know it’s a losing market,” Cippollini said. “We expect to lose at the draft. But the public loves it, so competitively speaking, we need to list it. We just go in with the mindset of trying to lose as little as possible.”
Another player that will keep the bookies up at night is Ashton Jeanty, the wunderkind running back from Boise State.
Jeanty was originally mocked to go to Dallas at No. 12, but has seen his stock rise to the point where he is being projected to go either fifth or sixth.
Cippollini is hoping it’s the latter.
“The most concerning scenario for us is Jeanty going No. 5 to the Jaguars,” he explained. “That, too, would be enough to make it a losing draft.”
As for the local teams, the Giants are posing more questions than answers for the house.
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“The Giants were a tricky one already, and it got trickier on Tuesday with the news that they’re fielding calls for their pick,” Cippollini said. “Originally, it seemed like they’d take Sanders, then it was Hunter, and now there’s word they’re taking a second look at Sanders, which is usually a sign that the owner is getting involved.”
Things look a lot simpler for Gang Green.
“We feel like we have the Jets much more locked in,” Cippollini noted. “You could argue that they should be in the market for a quarterback, but we haven’t seen much action that tells us they’re going to do that. It seems like it’ll be an offensive lineman, most likely Armand Membou.”
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