Santa Claus arrived fashionably late for a particularly ambitious gambler Monday night.
Christian McCaffrey’s touchdown in the second quarter of the 49ers’ Christmas game against the Ravens made a bettor on DraftKings sportsbook about a half-million dollars richer after a 14-leg NFL touchdown scorer parlay was completed.
The gambler went into Monday night’s matchup having already gotten touchdowns from Najee Harris, Gabriel Davis, Jahmyr Gibbs, DK Metcalf, Jerome Ford, Chris Rodriguez Jr., Jonathan Taylor, Calvin Ridley, James Conner, Raheem Mostert, Javonte Williams, Isiah Pacheco and D’Andre Swift.
All told, the bettor wagered $5 and won $489,378.01.
This means the bet paid out at nearly 100,000-to-1 odds.
The bettor identified himself in a social media video as Travis Dufner.
“I’ve put plenty of these parlays down before,” Dufner said in the video, prior to the game’s kickoff.
“I’ve hit a few small ones but obviously nothing like this.”
According to LinkedIn, Dufner is a financial advisor in New Jersey.
According to veteran sports gambling reporter Ben Fawkes, DraftKings does not allow cashouts in the middle of touchdown parlays, so the bettor had no choice but to let it ride.
Neverthless, if Dufner has a mountain of liquid cash sitting around, it would have been possible for him to hedge on a different book, such as ESPN Bet, by betting “no touchdown” for McCaffrey.
Betting on the NFL?
McCaffrey was as good a bet as anyone, maybe in NFL history, to score a touchdown in any given game, as he entered the night having hit paydirt in 12 of the Niners’ 14 games so far this season.
It bears mentioning that the house advantage on a bet like this is typically enormous for DraftKings, and the book might even be happy to lose this bet given the amount of publicity it will draw.
