MW A 'casual sports bettor' just turned a $30 parlay into $1.98 million. Why sportsbooks still love this type of bet.
By Weston Blasi
It was one of the biggest parlay payouts ever for Florida's Hard Rock Casino
Jazz Chisholm Jr. of the New York Yankees was one of the players that needed to hit a home run on Friday for the bet to win.
To say this gambler hit a home run at the Hard Rock Casino is an understatement.
A Florida bettor turned a $30 wager into $1.98 million on Friday after winning a six-leg parlay on various MLB players to hit home runs. According to the Hard Rock Casino, the sportsbook that accepted the wager, the parlay ticket cashed after home runs by Jazz Chisholm (Yankees), Nick Kurtz (Athletics), Riley Greene (Tigers), Coby Mayo (Orioles), Jesús Sánchez (Blue Jays) and Bryce Harper (Phillies).
The odds for the bet were +6,576,031, which means an implied probability of just 0.000015%.
The bettor made the wager on Friday morning, and became a millionaire overnight.
Hard Rock said the winner has preferred to remain anonymous, but acknowledged the bettor is a Florida resident and "fits the profile of a casual sports bettor."
A parlay wager is when multiple bets are combined into a single wager for a higher payout. These types of wagers are increasingly common among casual players because they offer big upside with minimal capital risk.
But despite this huge win, sports-betting companies want customers to bet using parlays. That's because parlays almost always lose.
"Long-shot parlays tend to be highly profitable for sportsbooks," a spokesperson for the National Council on Problem Gambling, a nonprofit organization focused on gambling issues, told MarketWatch. "Because the odds of winning are extremely low, the operators take in far more in wagers than they pay out in winnings."
Sports-betting operators like Hard Rock, DraftKings $(DKNG)$ and FanDuel $(FLUT)$ are not shy about highlighting wins like this, because these long-shot bets give hope to people who envision themselves as capable of hitting on big underdog bets. Oftentimes the sportsbooks will post about them on social media too.
"Promoting these bets, especially when framed around near-misses or life-changing payouts, generates excitement, shares and clicks - all of which help drive customer engagement and acquisition," the NCPG said.
Parlays have gotten so popular that roughly one in every three bets is a parlay, depending on the state it's placed in, according to several U.S. state betting reports.
A sportsbook's hold percentage - the amount of money it keeps on an average sports bet - is between 15% and 25% on parlays. By comparison, it's around 5% on traditional straight bets, according to UNLV's Center for Gaming Research.
See: Fernando Mendoza to make $54 million as the No. 1 NFL draft pick. Here are the other big winners - and losers.
And it's not just sportsbooks that are eagerly promoting parlays. Several prediction markets have also seen huge growth in "combos," a term that is essentially a parlay on a prediction market.
On Saturday, Kalshi saw $189 million in total volume traded on its platform on combos alone, mostly on sports events. The percentage of combo trading on prediction markets has increased significantly since October, according to Dustin Gouker, a gaming-industry analyst.
-Weston Blasi
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 27, 2026 16:21 ET (20:21 GMT)
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