Remember when Redditors caused GameStop’s stock price to go crazy a couple years ago? Reddit was at it again on Tuesday, when a simple post caused sportsbooks to drastically adjust the odds on a player to be the top pick in this week’s NFL Draft.
Kentucky’s Will Levis is considered one of the top quarterbacks in the draft, a probable first round pick. But a Reddit user named “SaleAgreeable2834” dropped a bomb in the r/sportsbook subreddit at about 8:00am ET, saying, “Will Levis is currently +4000 to be the first overall pick. Well ladies and gentleman (sic), he’s telling friends and family Carolina will in fact take him on Thursday. You’re welcome.”
The poster provided no other information. They are an anonymous user with no credentials. But hey, we live in insane times where anyone can manipulate markets at any time because people looking to get rich in a matter of seconds will fall for anything.
Bettors flocked to the sportsbooks to put in their wagers. Within an hour, sportsbooks moved the odds on Levis being the first pick from 40-1 to 4-1.
“Once you get those flood of bets, it’s going to make a big odds shift,” Caesars college football lead trader Joey Feazel told USA Today. He added that there weren’t any earth-shattering bets, partly because the maximum bet allowed on the draft is low compared to other types of wagers. There were some bets for a several hundred dollars, but obviously there had to be heavy volume, or the books wouldn’t have moved the line so much.
“Given the nature of the draft, we drastically cut the price based on this action and eventually came to a price where the bets stopped,” a DraftKings spokesperson told ESPN. “We are still seeing some small bets trickle through at the current price, but the speculation is all the action was off the back of a Reddit post.”
This is all likely good for the sportsbooks, too, as Levis will probably not be the first pick. In fact, BetMGM removed him from its board last week, but because of the Reddit hype, it put his odds back up Tuesday morning at 5-1. Might as well get a few stragglers still putting money on Levis.
Alabama quarterback Bryce Young is a heavy favorite to be the number one pick Thursday night and become the Carolina Panthers’ new signal caller. DraftKings has him at -2,000, while Levis is now up to +800.
Carolina has said that they know who they are going to pick, but are obviously not revealing that information until they are officially on the clock.
