As Saturday night’s bout between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor approaches, the public has continued to hammer the underdog, bringing Mayweather’s odds down from a massive -1100 to anywhere from -500 to -600, depending on the book. It’s not surprising that the public has been on McGregor, considering his massive, loyal fan base and the fact that there’s little reason to put a small wager down on a heavy favorite.
However, while over 90 percent of the tickets have been placed on McGregor, the big money at the sharp books has started to come in on Floyd Mayweather.According to ESPN’s David Purdum, the average wager on McGregor at Westgate has been $212, compared to an average wager of $8,036 on Mayweather. There have been multiple reported wagers well into the six figures on Mayweather, including $880,000 from the Maloof brothers, but on Thursday, the MGM Sports Book took the first $1 million wager on Mayweather at -550.
.@MGMRaceSports took a $1 million bet on Floyd Mayweather today, per Jay Rood.
— David Payne Purdum (@DavidPurdum) August 24, 2017
That means, should Mayweather win as expected, the person that placed the wager, who is a house bettor (meaning someone with an account with the casino) that wired in the million on Thursday, would walk away with a cool $181,818.18 in profit. That’s a healthy chunk of change and, considering what the odds once were, they have to feel like they got pretty tremendous value.
However, MGM wasn’t the only book to take a seven-figure wager on Mayweather as William Hill Sports Books revealed on Thursday night that they took a $1.2 million bet on Mayweather -500, which would win $240,000. As of now, the largest wager at William Hill placed on McGregor is $150,000.
The big money that’s been coming in has started pushing the odds back out. At Westgate, Mayweather recently was moved from -550 back to -600 after sharp money flooded the book, and the $1 million wager at MGM moved odds from -550 to -600, per Purdum. That said, with a heavy McGregor fan contingent expected to be in Vegas this weekend, the public will keep shoveling money onto the UFC star in the face of sharp money on the boxing legend. Should Mayweather manage to lose, those million bets would go a long ways towards paying off the massive liability the books have to the thousands of smaller McGregor wagers.
