New Jersey Gambler Won $600,000 With $30,000 Sports Bet Thanks To Ravens Week 1 Rout Of Dolphins

A new type of sports betting allowed one New Jersey gambler to turn a $30,000 wager into a $600,000 score.

According to a report from ESPN Chalk, a Garden State man bet $30,000 on the Baltimore Ravens to beat the Miami Dolphins in the first week of the NFL season. The Ravens were a six-point favorite but won in a route by a final score of 59-10.

In traditional sports betting, the man would double his bet and earn a payout of $60,000. However, PointsBet, an Australian sportsbook that launched in New Jersey at the start of the year offers “PointsBetting.” This twist to traditional betting allowed the gambler to risk even more based on how much the final score deviated from the spread.

For every point that the team covers the spread, the bettor will either win or lose a multiple of his original bet. In this case, for every point that the Ravens scored after the six-point spread, the gambler won another $30,000.

The bettor must front the cash of the added action, in case the team doesn’t cover and the bettor loses the multiples to the book. He can cap his action and mitigate how much he can win or lose. In this case, the bettor deposited an extra $600,000 and capped his win or loss at 20 times his initial wager.

He won the max that he could, based on the odds he laid himself. If he was somehow able to foresee a 49-point victory, the bettor could’ve won a max of $1.29 million from the sportsbook.

ESPN said that the first PointsBet, which is known as spread betting in the gambling world, was made on Jan. 8 in a Pacers-Cavaliers NBA matchup. A professional gambler bet $20 on over 165 seconds for the first three-pointer to be made. The first three-point bucket hit the bottom of the net 53 seconds into the game and the bettor lost $2,240 to the sportsbook.

Johnny Aitken, CEO of PointsBet, acknowledged that this type of gambling isn’t for everyone.

“[PointsBetting] does appeal to a sort of different type of client,” Aitken told ESPN. “A person where it’s not just about being right, but being really right, and being willing to ride out the upside and downside as well, which this product has.”

PointsBet reported that on the first Sunday of the NFL season, the sportsbook lost about $1 million to bettors in New Jersey and Iowa, the only two American markets where it is currently legal.