You may have heard this past weekend was the greatest sports weekend ever?
The Saturday combo of Mayweather vs. Pacquiao and the Kentucky Derby—not to mention NBA playoffs, Stanley Cup ice time, Yankees-Red Sox and the NFL draft—was pure gluttony for sports fans and sports bettors alike.
If you ever doubted the expression “it’s always about the money,” then take a look at this currency-expanding explanation of how cash really was king.
Bars in West Virginia and across the country paid anywhere from $3,000 to more than $16,000 to show the so-called fight of the century, where even the payout for the loser was about 56 times what Dana Holgorsen makes per season.
Sports wagering has never experienced such a robust cashflow. And remember: These were just the Nevada figures from legal wagering, which make up only an estimated 3 to 4 percent of total bets. The illegal bookies still rake in the rest.