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A statement win by the Minnesota Vikings against the lowly St. Louis Rams has put quite a dent in the purse strings of online sportsbooks.
With nearly 100 percent of the bets going Minnesota's way on Sunday and the Vikings registering the heaviest betting volume of any team during the early afternoon games, online sportsbooks and Vegas establishments all got hammered. It's fair to say there were few bookies happy to see Brett Favre back from retirement after Sunday's bloodbath.
"Minnesota was the most bet on team everywhere," said Don Shapiro of Gambling911.com. "The only saving grace for the bookies on Sunday was a win by Denver, which helped to recoup some of the Vikings losses."
The books failed to move the line off the number "10" in order to generate more betting action for St. Louis.
"The coveted Sagarin Ratings had a line formulation of 16 on this game," Shapiro points out. "This number surely would have balanced the action somewhat."
Oddsmakers may have been concerned over past history between these two teams and St. Louis' ability to keep this series close. Prior to this game, the Rams were 4-1 against Minnesota since 2000. This is a different Rams team and certainly a better Vikings team since Brett Favre joined over the summer.
Gambling911.com's Tyrone Black had another theory as to why the bookies wouldn't move the line in this game.
"Following a dramatic win against San Francisco and an emotional victory over Green Bay, this game against winless St. Louis would seem to present a classic letdown scenario to Minnesota," he expressed in an article last week.
While the US-facing books took a hit from this game Sunday and the British betting companies have been complaining about their own football games favoring punters overwhelmingly this year, College Football has provided US-facing bookmakers with a solid revenue stream for most of the past couple of weeks.
Maybe they should just cancel betting on the NFL and Premiership Football then!
Just kidding.
Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher
