DraftKings pays out more than $175M on Super Bowl LVI bets

Yahoo Finance's Josh Schafer discusses the impact sports betting had on the Super Bowl.

Video Transcript

KARINA MITCHELL: Welcome back. Well, the LA Rams weren't the only big winners at last night's game. Some gamblers won big, too. Our Josh Schafer is here with some stats on those big winners from yesterday night. Josh, the odds on favorite were for the Rams however, right?

JOSH SCHAFER: The odds on favor was for the Rams, Karina, and I think some of the sportsbooks seemed to be pretty happy that they did-- that the Rams did end up winning and that the game didn't go to overtime. It's always interesting talking to these sportsbooks the day after the game and to kind of see who the house is rooting for, based on where the money was.

So some of the big numbers we've heard thus far, DraftKings confirmed to Yahoo Finance that they paid out more than $175 million in bets yesterday on yesterday's game. And so that's about half of what DraftKings had for a total handle in New York over a three-week period, so we can see how big that Super Bowl was.

And that number doesn't even include the bets that lost that DraftKings kept. A lot of these sports gaming companies have earnings coming up, so they're not necessarily willing to share all of their information and aren't supposed to share all their information just yet. So information has kind of slowly been trickling out. And I suspect we're going to get more and more as the week comes on.

Some other numbers we've learned, FanDuel paid out $55 million total off just two bets. So FanDuel had a promotional bent that was giving bettors 56 to 1 odds, which if you're familiar with gambling, is pretty favorable. And so they paid out over $30 million for that bet. And then combine that with the Bengals covering the spread, and FanDuel paid out, as I said, $55 million for just those two bets alone.

I also spoke with BetMGM. BetMGM said that they had a struggling start to the game. Odell Beckham scored the first touchdown. A lot of bettors bet on Odell Beckham to score that touchdown. One bettor even bet $10,000 on Odell Beckham to score that touchdown. That bettor ended up netting $100,000 from that. So a lot of big money being handed out yesterday.

And then some other bets that we were following here, you had famous pop star Drake place some bets in Bitcoin. So not the crypto wasn't just in the ads last night, it was also in the gambling. And so he bet in Bitcoin on Odell Beckham Jr., who takes his salary in Bitcoin, so a lot of crypto connections there. And Drake ended up netting about $300,000 in total from his three bets.

One thing to note on Drake, though, a lot of people were kind of complaining about online yesterday, Odell Beckham got hurt. Drake actually probably would have made more money had Odell Beckham not got hurt and kept catching the ball. A lot of people played how many yards he was going to catch. And since he's hurt, he couldn't do that anymore. So Drake ended up losing one of those bets, but he made out OK.

One other big better I wanted to hit on, unfortunately, Mattress Mack was a big loser last night. He's going to be on our show on the 4:00 PM hour. We're going to ask him about it. But Mattress Mack down in Texas lost what we believe to be the biggest mobile sports bet ever. He had about $9.5 million total on the Bengals winning last night. This was part of his hedging because he gives out free mattress gear of over $3,000 if the Bengals won, so he ran one of those promotions where fans could win. And he ended up betting the other way. He lost. He lost $9.5 million. Pretty big bet there.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Yeah, I give him credit for willing to come on the show on the 4 o'clock hour. I got to tune in for that one. I'm sure Odell going out, though, injured definitely poured some cold water on a lot of people's bets yesterday. But look, we heard about the great expectations. More than 31 million Americans were supposed to have bet on the big game. What are the final numbers?

JOSH SCHAFER: Yeah, so we're waiting on the exact number of who bet, how many people themselves actually bet. But the biggest winner for me, Alexis, out of this-- and I think the gambling companies would say the same-- is their technology worked. When we're expecting 31.4 million people to bet on a game and a lot of them to bet on these apps, you need the technology to be able to hold up with that.

Last year, during the Super Bowl, that sort of fell out, and that became the story for the gambling companies after, was, how do build a tech to fit all these customers? That didn't happen yesterday. All these apps worked pretty well. They were able to pay out their bets. So we're starting to see the maturation of the sports gambling market in terms of being able to handle the volume. And I think that's a huge step forward for these companies and the industry as a whole.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: For sure. All right, Josh Schafer, thanks so much for the lowdown, gambling there on the Super Bowl.