Standalone NFL games driving more betting than ever

During the second “Sunday Night Football” game of the 2024 season, Chicago Bears kicker Cairo Santos nailed a 54-yard field goal with 2:51 remaining in regulation to cut his team’s deficit to six. Neither team scored the rest of the game, and the Houston Texans won 19-13.

Santos’ kick had many of the betting implications typical of an NFL game. Houston was a 6.5-point favorite and was heavily backed by the public at nearly a 70% handle share. Caesars Sportsbook vice president of trading Craig Mucklow told ESPN that the book had been enjoying a winning day on Sunday, but the high-profile nature of the standalone prime-time game dictated that the book needed a Bears cover to win its day.

The contests held on Thursday, Sunday and Monday nights, often referred to as “island games” or officially as “national windows” by the NFL, are games that have no competition from football or, much of the time, any other sport. The solitary focus allows these games to absolutely dominate the American sports world whenever they are played, and that phenomenon also extends to sports betting.

An ESPN BET spokesperson told ESPN that 2023 prime-time games, as well as the first-ever game played on the day after Thanksgiving, brought in nearly triple the amount of handle compared to weekly Sunday afternoon games. DraftKings notes that its top 25 most active games by handle of the 2023 season were all in national windows; when sorted by bet share, the first non-standalone game checks in at No. 13 on the list.

The four most-bet games at ESPN BET in Week 1 of the 2024 season all occurred in national windows. The same was true at DraftKings and BetMGM, who both note that SNF and MNF are typically the most-bet games of the week and often “make or break” the weekend for the book.

“Standalone games create appointment viewing and wagering opportunities — whether it’s the anticipation of Thursday night or the extra shine around ‘Monday Night Football’ on ESPN,” an ESPN BET spokesperson said via email. “With all eyes on one matchup, we do see significantly higher bets and handle than the weekly afternoon games.”

NFL games accounted for the 14 most-watched television programs of 2023, and 2024 is already off to a hot start with 21 million average viewers in Week 1, a record to start a season. The large majority of last regular season’s most viewed games were in prime time, largely due to the fact that those contests don’t have to worry about competing with each other for eyeballs like the Sunday afternoon slate does.

DraftKings director of sportsbook operations Johnny Avello told ESPN, “Viewing means betting,” so betting handle spikes when the intrigue is at its highest.

“It’s not only about the isolated game, it’s also about the teams and the positioning of where that game falls in a time frame,” Avello said. “If it’s prime time, then you can expect it to do really well as far as the bettor engaging on that one game.”

The importance of prime time in the context of island games reveals itself when the NFL starts its International Series, where Sunday games generally start at 9:30 a.m. ET and 6:30 a.m. PT. Avello says that these games “Do OK, but nowhere near as much as the games that are positioned in prime time where everybody’s gearing up to watch them on a particular night.”

This season, the league will play games in England in October and Germany in November, but it already had a unique international showcase in prime time when the Green Bay Packers played the Philadelphia Eagles in Brazil on Friday night of Week 1. The game attracted 14.0 million viewers for Peacock, making it the most watched regular-season NFL game and the second-most watched event in the streamer’s history at the time.

While that game, predictably, couldn’t keep up with the betting handle of the “Thursday Night Football” season opener or “Monday Night Football” in Week 1, the Friday Brazil game still comfortably landed in the top four most-bet games of the week across the major sportsbooks, with BetMGM actually saying it outperformed Rams-Lions on “Sunday Night Football.”

Friday is a day the league is building upon. Last season, it staged its first-ever Black Friday game after asserting its dominance on Thanksgiving once again. It has also started expanding into Christmas following increased viewer interest when games naturally fell on the holiday.

Avello says that the increased viewership and pageantry around these contests allows the books to get creative with some of their offerings, but ultimately, the calculus of maximizing their profits comes down to their usual bookmaking decisions, regardless of when games are played.

“Traditionally, the favorite winning or covering impacts performance for customers/sportsbooks more than increased action,” BetMGM senior trading manager Tristan Daivs said via email. “This is true whether a game is played in prime time or not.”

ESPN’s David Purdum contributed reporting for this piece.