Chargers Upset Wipes Out a Third of Circa’s Survivor Pool in Las Vegas
An 8.5-point favourite lost outright, costing Circa Sports bettors $10.3M across two NFL survivor contests in a single week.
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited by the ON360 newsroom.
A single upset in Week 1 of the NFL season cost bettors at Circa Sports more than $10 million. The Los Angeles Chargers, favoured by 8.5 points, lost outright to the Arizona Cardinals 26-14, eliminating thousands of entries in the Las Vegas sportsbook’s popular Survivor contests.
Chargers Were the Week’s Biggest Favourite to Fall
The Chargers shared the title of biggest Week 1 favourite with the Jacksonville Jaguars, but the two teams delivered very different results for the pools built around picking winners each week. Jacksonville routed Cleveland 34-10 and kept all 8,127 entries alive.
Los Angeles was the second-most popular pick in the main Circa Survivor contest, with 7,585 entries. None of them survived after a favourite that never led its own game.
In total, 8,039 entries were knocked out of the main contest in Week 1. Another 213 fell when the Tennessee Titans lost to the New York Jets, and 81 more went out when the Dallas Cowboys lost to the New York Giants on Sunday night. Eighteen entrants forgot to submit a pick altogether, forfeiting their $1,000 entry fee by default.
That leaves 16,978 entries chasing the contest’s top prize of $25,017,000.
Grandissimo Field Also Took a Hit
Circa’s high-stakes Grandissimo contest, which carries a $100,000 entry fee, saw the same Chargers loss wipe out 28 of its 77 entries, or 36.4% of the field. No other team caused a single elimination in that contest during Week 1.
Forty-nine entries remain in the race for Grandissimo’s $7.7 million payout.
Circa Sports vice president Mike Palm said the combined $10.3 million lost across the two contests on the Chargers was the most ever wiped out on a single team in one week of Survivor play at the book.
Looking to Week 2
Survivor players still in the running face a new round of decisions. The San Francisco 49ers are Week 2’s biggest favourite, laying 12.5 points at home to the Miami Dolphins at Levi’s Stadium, with a moneyline of -950 implying a 90.5% chance of an outright win.
Other heavily backed teams include the Baltimore Ravens, favoured by 8.5 points over New Orleans after a 41-23 road win over Indianapolis, and Tampa Bay, laying 8.5 points against a Cleveland team that struggled badly in its opener.
The Detroit Lions were the closest call among heavily picked teams in Week 1, needing overtime to beat New Orleans 31-30. No other team backed by 50 or more entries lost outright.
Circa’s contests are run through its Las Vegas sportsbook and are not available to Ontario or other Canadian bettors, whose legal wagering runs through provincially regulated platforms. Those operators are required to offer tools such as deposit limits and self-exclusion for players who want to manage their play.
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