It was a big week of upsets in the NFL as the Indianapolis Colts defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in a game where the undefeated Chiefs entered as heavy favorites. That hurt a lot of gamblers, especially those who were playing the parlay. That is always a good thing for sportsbooks, but no single contest did more for these establishments than the Oakland Raiders victory over the Chicago Bears.
According to several reports, there were a large number of bets on games in Las Vegas on Sunday. Many of them were going the way of the person placing the bet, that is until the Chicago Bears stumbled against Oakland, falling 24-21. According to these reports, that saved sportsbooks a significant amount of money, especially when it came to parlay bets.
Chicago entered this contest as 6.5 point favorites. According to gambling insiders, several six-figure wagers were placed on this contest, with the vast majority of the overall number of wagers placed on the Chicago Bears. This had most of the sportsbooks in Las Vegas deeply concerned about the prospect of Chicago winning this game.
According to Mirage sportsbook director Jeff Stoneback,
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“It would’ve been a disastrous day for us if the Bears had covered.It was a monster game for us. It was probably our biggest win of the year on any game. Winning straight up made it even sweeter for us, but it was one of those games we really had to sweat.”
Sweat they did, as Oakland jumped out to a 17-0 lead, only to see Chicago battle back to take a four point lead late in the game. However, the Raiders would ultimately prevail, saving these Las Vegas establishments a huge amount of money
The Oakland Raiders began the 2019 NFL season as one of the biggest longshots to win the Super Bowl. Because of a lack of a star-studded lineup, they were viewed as having a minimal chance of reaching football’s biggest game.
However, five weeks into the season they have pulled off one of the biggest upsets. In fact, this is their second straight week of pulling off a big victory. In Week 4, Oakland defeated Indianapolis who, ironically, had the other big upset of the weekend.
Not much was expected from Oakland when they opened the season after a miserable defeat against Minnesota. This helped to dim their odds even further, but their victory over Chicago on Sunday afternoon moved the team to 3-2 and put them right in the thick of things for the AFC West Division race.