A Very "Customer Friendly" Gambling Season Continues Into 2025

The sportsbooks continued to get hammered this past weekend as favorites came out on top for the most part.

One noteworthy exception came in the NFL with the Houston Texans topping the LA Chargers on Saturday.

As much as 68% of the spread action was on LA as a -2.5 favorite for this one.

Houston All Pro cornerback Derek Stingley grabbed two of Justin Herbert's career-high four interceptions.

Eric Murray returned one of the interceptions for a touchdown and C.J. Stroud threw a TD pass in Houston's 31-12 win.

Since the merger, quarterbacks are 55-551-2 when throwing four or more interceptions in the regular season and just 3-33 when doing so in the playoffs.

“I let the team down,” Herbert said. “You can’t turn over the ball like that and expect to win. I put the team in a tough position there with four turnovers like that.”

Heavily favored Baltimore would go on to roll over Pittsburgh 28-14.  They too were seeing around 65% of the spread action.

The Bills and Eagles easily handled their opponents on Sunday.

Buffalo came into their game against Denver as a big -7.5 favorite and seeing better than 75% of the spread action at most books.

Philadelphia covered against Green Bay with around 65% of the action coming in on the Eagles.

The later game featuring an upset win by the Commanders over Tampa featured more balanced betting action.

The two remaining college football playoff round games also saw more balanced action.

Overall, it's been a bloodbath for the books of late.  But that's been the trend all season it seems.

Flutter Entertainment, which operates FanDuel and dominates the sports betting industry with a market value of $45 billion, said the latest NFL season has been “the most customer-friendly” with the highest rate of favorites winning in 20 years. Altogether, the bigger payouts to bettors cut an estimated $390 million from the company’s revenue from most of November to the end of December.

“It’s a business that has some short-term volatility to it, depending on the sports outcomes, but investors have grown increasingly aware that comes with the business,” Robert Fishman, senior analyst at equity research firm MoffettNathanson, told PennLive.