At the William Hill sportsbook in the U.K., a 46-year-old punter from Dublin, Ireland turned £50 ($78.10) into £64,543 ($100,810) with a 15-leg parlay that featured every home team and two correlated round-robin wagers.
The Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook lost on 11 of the 15 games in what vice president Jay Kornegay called a "terrible night for baseball, but nothing like a bad football day."
David Purdum details the rise of Dial Sports, a phone service created by Mickey Charles in his Pennsylvania garage, which helped grow pre-Internet sports betting in the United States.
"Knowing betting patterns, booking games on a history-making [night], when home teams go 15-0, wasn't a good thing," Kornegay, a 20-year Vegas veteran bookmaker, said. "It felt like an unexpected punch from a defensive end."
It was the first time ever that 15 home teams had won on the same day, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. The punter from Dublin told William Hill UK that he wouldn't have placed the bet, if he had known that stat.
Nick Bogdanovich, director of trading for William Hill's Nevada book, said Tuesday was the best day of the season for baseball bettors so far.
But don't feel too sorry for the books. This has been a record baseball season for Nevada sports books in both handle and profit. According to Nevada Gaming Control, $164.98 million was bet on baseball in June, the most ever. The books won $9.4 million off of those wagers, the second most ever for a single month. Their best baseball month ever? This May, when they took bettors for $10.72 million.
Since April, Nevada sports books are up $27.08 million on baseball, a 56.42 percent increase from the same three-month span in 2014.
