Bookmakers' Secret Nightmare: The Unpredictable Chaos of the 2025 NFL Draft Betting

As the 2025 NFL Draft approaches, with only days to go before it kicks off in Green Bay, Wisconsin, anticipation is building. All eyes are on QB Cam Ward, overwhelmingly favored to be the No. 1 pick (-10000 at BetMGM; a $100 wager profits just $1). While sports bettors and fans were all about the Super Bowl earlier this year, the draft hasn’t quite captured the same enthusiasm from the oddsmakers. Instead of excitement, there’s a notable sense of trepidation as the event looms closer.

Why the apprehension? Well, while Nevada’s sportsbooks celebrated an all-time high in February with a record-breaking $22.1 million on Super Bowl LIX — only miscalculating two Super Bowls since 1991 — the NFL Draft presents an entirely different challenge for bookmakers. It’s not a game, where probabilities and statistics can guide outcomes; it’s an event dominated by insider information and speculation, often leaving books in the red. Sharp bettors, with their insider knowledge and market savvy, tend to thrive in this environment, making draft betting a high-stakes, unpredictable affair.

“Bookmakers hate the draft,” revealed Jeff Benson, Circa Sports director of operations, during a candid chat on X. “It’s all work for virtually guaranteed loss, and we’re looking at losing five to six figures each year.”

This raises numerous questions: Why do bookmakers dread the draft, why do sharp bettors relish this opportunity, has the window of advantage for these savvy bettors now shut? And if it’s such a loss-making venture, why bother offering NFL Draft markets at all?

We sat down with five experienced oddsmakers and a selection of sharp bettors to dive into these intricacies, exploring the unique dynamics of consumer expectations and market unpredictability that turn the NFL Draft into a financial minefield for sportsbooks.

The 2020 NFL Draft changed the game

While NFL Draft betting has been part of the offshore betting scene for ages, it was only in 2017, when Nevada started to legalize these wagers, that things really started to open up. The expansion of market offerings in 2018 was just the beginning.

Then came the unique 2020 NFL Draft, set against the backdrop of a global shutdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak. As entertainment options dwindled and sports events paused, the draft took on a new life. With no access to teams for reporters, oddsmakers employed innovative tactics, utilizing expanded markets to turn the draft into a major betting spectacle. It was during this time that the NFL Draft truly caught fire in the betting community, highlighted on sports betting shows, podcasts, and social media.

“Betting the NFL Draft was these entirely new strategic animal, a logic puzzle, and I dove into analyzing each GM’s tendencies,” Rob Pizzola, CEO of The Hammer Network, told me. “It was one of the most engrossing sports binges of my betting career.”

Interestingly, the betting action became wildly lucrative, with big hits on player predictions like tackle Mekhi Becton going at No. 11 to the Jets at favorable odds.

The draft has never been, and likely never will be, an easy game for books to book. It’s all about information, predicting decisions based on rumors, mock drafts, and sometimes, single X posts that can shift the odds dramatically.

Given its quirks, it’s essential to ask: Why do casinos put draft betting on the table if it's such a losing proposition?

Stay tuned to find out the strategies behind the big decisions and where the profits lie. LEARN MORE.Advertisement“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.”Advertisement

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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.”Advertisement