By Merv Moore
Sports Director & Head Baseball Coach
Tomorrow, Drake Maye will drop back. Kenneth Walker III will slice through the line. Jaxon-Smith-Njigba will look for daylight. And somewhere in a gleaming corporate tower, an algorithm will quietly celebrate a record-breaking profit—long before the confetti falls.
While millions of Americans fixate on the scoreboard, I’m watching a different one: the financial scoreboard of the betting industry. Companies like DraftKings, FanDuel, PrizePicks, and Underdog Fantasy aren’t just hoping for a big game—they’re counting on it. In fact, they’ve already penciled in the profits.
Projections from industry analysts—and my own research in my new ebook, Sports Betting: Why You Can’t Win—suggest that from this Super Bowl alone, these platforms will collectively rake in over $500 million in losses from bettors. That’s not revenue. That’s your losses, repackaged as their “gross gaming revenue.”
Let that sink in. Half a billion dollars. In one day.
How? It’s not because Maye throws a pick or Sam Darnold misses a read. It’s because the entire system is engineered to make you lose, no matter how much you know about
football.
I should know. I’ve been in the arena. I played fantasy baseball and football for decades. I’ve even won MLB and NFL tournaments on DraftKings. I loved the competition, the test of knowledge. But over the last few years, the game changed. It wasn’t about knowledge anymore. It was about technology designed to fleece even the sharpest fans.
Take the parlay—the betting industry’s golden goose. Tomorrow, millions will stack Maye to toss a pair of scores, Walker over 70.5 rushing yards, and the Seahawks to cover. The screen will flash a tantalizing +1200 payout. It feels like brilliance.
But as I detail in my book, parlays are mathematical traps. The sportsbooks don’t just add the odds—they multiply the house edge. That “+1200” parlay might have a true probability payout of +1500 or higher. The hold on these bets can exceed 30%. It’s how they make the bulk of their money: selling you a dream of glory while pocketing a guaranteed profit.
And who’s most vulnerable? College students. The next generation of fans, bombarded with “risk-free” offers and slick ads during every timeout. They’re told betting is just another way to engage with the game. In reality, it’s a way to transfer their tuition money—or their rent—to a corporate balance sheet.
In Sports Betting: Why You Can’t Win, I break down the numbers cold. The vig, the hidden margins, the psychological hooks in the app design. The same apps that will ping
you tomorrow with “live alerts” and “boosted odds” are built to keep you in a cycle of chasing losses.
I walked away from betting in 2025 not because I lost my edge, but because I realized the game was rigged. The algorithms had won. My knowledge—hard-earned over decades as a professional sports writer and sports fanatic—was being used against me, and against fans like you.
This Super Bowl, you can choose a different play. Instead of funding DraftKings’ next earnings call, invest in your own clarity. For less than the cost of a losing prop bet ($4.99, to be exact), you can get the full story in my ebook on Amazon.
Learn why the house always wins. How your passion is being monetized. And how to reclaim the pure, unadulterated joy of sports—without a betting slip in hand.
Because tomorrow, while everyone’s watching the game, I’ll be watching something more important: people waking up to the truth.
And that’s a win no algorithm can beat.
Get the book here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GKWXY3CT
Marvin “Merv” Moore is a former award-winning sports writer, international baseball coach, and reformed sports bettor. His ebook, Sports Betting: Why You Can’t Win, is available now on Amazon.
