It took until the very end and a victory drive led by rookie quarterback C.J. Stroud of the Houston Texans to record one of the biggest payments on a parlay bet ever disclosed by a U.S. sportsbook.
After the Hard Rock sportsbook reopened, a customer in Florida won $5.5 million from a $500,000 four-leg NFL parlay. On Sunday, Texans kicker Matt Ammendola scored a 38-yard field goal on the final play to lead Houston to a 30-27 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals.
The four legs of the same-game parlay were:
• The Houston Texans to beat the Cincinnati Bengals
• The Texans-Bengals to go over 44.5 points
• Texans running back Devin Singletary to score a touchdown
• Singletary to go over 51.5 rushing yards
The Texans, the underdog, shocked the Bengals with a string of hits. On the last drive, Singletary ran for 150 yards and a touchdown, while Stroud completed three of four passes to put Houston in field goal position.
For two years, Hard Rock’s Florida online sportsbook was unavailable as a legal dispute reached the U.S. Supreme Court. According to a person familiar with the proceedings, million-dollar wagers have not been unusual since the venue reopened last Tuesday.
A Florida bettor wagered a total of $1,546,000 on a Kent State football squad that was only able to win once versus Bowling Green on Wednesday.
The bets:
• $1.12 million on Kent State +10.5 (-115)
• $426,000 on Kent State money line at +325
Bowling Green prevailed 49–19.
Hard Rock Digital senior director of communications Jon Chapper told ESPN that the wagers on Kent State were authentic, but he would not say if the wagers came from the same player who took home the $5.5 million parlay. According to Chapper, the kind of big bets that were made this past week, even on less well-known events, were in line with the kind of gambling that the sportsbook had observed throughout its nearly one-month-long operation in November 2021.
Big bets are nothing new to Fort Lauderdale tech executive Shahrouz Ebadian. Throughout his gambling career, he has routinely flown to Las Vegas and, more recently, New Orleans to place his wagers, which have ranged from $10,000 to $100,000 and larger.
While he wasn’t shocked by the amount of bets that Hard Rock in Florida was disclosing, Ebadian teased some of the wagerers’ selections in an interview with ESPN. When he initially got the news about the large wagers on Kent State on social media, he didn’t believe it and was seated at a bar with his girlfriend. He claimed that after losing to Kent State, he was informed by a Hard Rock VIP host that the wager was legitimate and that the same bettor was back to place another wager the next day.
