Online sportsbook Bovada.LV was hijacked by a cosmic hiccup this weekend when 10 of 11 underdogs won their fights at UFC Fight Night 61. The statistical anomaly resulted in multiple $1 parlays paying $25,000.00 each, and the company losing almost $1 million dollars in one night. That seems unfair, given that sportsbooks depend upon a degree of predictability in order to service the public’s gambling needs. Because people really do enjoy gambling, and some people cannot even conceive of enduring another miserable day without doing it. And if places like Bovada.LV can’t profit off a thunderstorm of collective destructive impulses, seeded in patterns of self-defeating behavior that resulted from repressed childhood traumas, then that’s a shame to be sure.
Yes, the real losers here were respectable companies who routinely depend upon the flawed foresight of irresponsible compulsive gamblers, which is a shame, because nobody twisted anybody’s arm to put a $500.00 child support payment on Frank Mir. But the universe is cruel now and then, even to seemingly bulletproof enterprises that engage in responsible odds-making. It is enough to make a sportsbook manager question his belief in a just god. Thankfully, hundreds of thousands of alcoholics and closeted psych cases will be confusedly betting their children’s inheritance money on the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight in May.
