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Giants underdogs in NLDS, sportsbooks to lose millions if SF wins World Series

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© Darren Yamashita | 2021 Jun 27

Sportsbooks will be screwed if the San Francisco Giants win the World Series, but it hasn’t changed their handicapping for the National League Division Series. According to ESPN, multiple books stand to lose over $1 million dollars if San Francisco goes all the way.

“Honestly, we get crushed if the Giants win,” MGM director of trading Jeff Stoneback told ESPN.

The Giants remain significant underdogs to the Los Angeles Dodgers (-160) despite the fact they have home field advantage after finishing the regular season with a better record. It’s just more of the same for the Giants, who were the underdogs to win the NL West until the final two days of the season after leading the NL West for nearly the entire year.

“We didn’t think they had a real chance to do this,” SuperBook executive director John Murray told ESPN. “We consider the Dodgers to be the best team in baseball. We’ve thought that the whole season and thought it was just inevitable they would pass the Giants.”

Because sportsbooks never thought the Giants would win the division, the odds for a Giants World Series win consistently offered a significant payout. The Giants entered the season as 100-to-1 long shots. In late July, while holding MLB’s best record, you could still get them at 10-to-1. At the beginning of the postseason, the Giant had just the fourth best odds to win it all (+675).

“Obviously you’ve got a team with high odds like that with a fast start, people jumped on them early at those high odds and they never went away,” Stoneback said.

“I got a phone call with something to the effect of, ‘How did we ever get into that position on the Giants?’” Murray said. “It’s hard to lower liability when one guy has $1,000 at 300-to-1 and another guy has $1,000 at 200-to-1. And then you just have the sheer volume of tickets because they’re such a popular team.”