Outsmarting the casinos: How the NFL cost Vegas for the first time in decades
The NFL’s biggest day and Las Vegas’ busiest day is approaching as the Super Bowl nears. Vegas will be hoping to recover from a slow December.

For a lot of you about the read this article, this is going to give you hope. For the select few, this should speak volumes to the improbability of “breaking Vegas” and will keep you even farther away from the sportsbooks.
So you’re telling me there’s a chance
Gamblers rejoice. It is possible to outsmart the oddsmakers and the month of December proved that. In the final month of the NFL’s regular season, bettors around the state of Nevada, not just in Las Vegas, reported a loss for the first time in over a decade.
The casinos lost $2.1 million on NFL wagers, which is the first time sportsbooks have been in the red during the NFL’s regular season since 2012. The casinos took their heaviest loss ever, paying a cool $5.3 million in November of that year on both pro and college football.
The 12 year gap tells you how often sportsbooks come out on top, and the fact that there have only been 13 months in which bettors toppled the experts the history of the state. Just to give you an idea of not only how often the sportsbooks win, but how much in September the betting houses won a net of $80.9 million in a first month of the season that was filled with upsets.
Vegas still on top
Favoirtes are the popular pick among a big majority of the betting public and in December the favorites won 76.7% of the games which was the biggest percentage since 2005, and in the top five best months for favorites since the Super Bowl era began.
It’s not just Vegas, Flutter, which the parent company of one of the biggest online sportsbooks FanDuel, got hit especially on parlays. “The 2024/2025 NFL season to date has been the most customer friendly since the launch of online sports betting with the highest rate of favorites winning in nearly 20 years,” the company said in a release.
Despite the good news for football bettors in December, the sportsbooks in Vegas and all around the state of Nevada still netted $15 million as NBA and college basketball covered their football losses. Now with the Super Bowl right around the corner, Vegas is gearing up to cash in big again as even the most casual of gamblers will be throwing out some serous cash on gambling’s biggest day.