Thunder bettor smartly cashed out $1.7M ticket in the worst possible way
Wayne Shelton has been a viral sensation in sports betting circles over the last week ever since he made public a three-leg parlay bet that was one-leg away from winning him $1.7 million.
All he needed was for the Oklahoma City Thunder to win an NBA championship, after the first two legs cashed on a Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl title and Texas Rangers World Series title.
Well, after seeing the Thunder stave off a 3-1 deficit Monday with a fourth-quarter comeback in Game 4 of their second-round series against the Dallas Mavericks, Shelton decided he saw enough. He cashed out his DraftKings ticket for just over $80,000 — a huge profit over his original $100 bet.
And yet, he still likely left a bunch of money on the table.
THE $1.7 MILLION THUNDER BETTOR HAS CASHED OUT
(w/ @Ascended85 @DKSportsbook) pic.twitter.com/0lXGadLF4L
— br_betting (@br_betting) May 14, 2024
As Shelton said in the video announcing his cash out, the offer from the sportsbook had reached as much as $100,000. So, while the money he walked away with was much more than he started with, it could have been a little better.
But that’s not the part that stings the most. What really hurts is knowing how much he should have been offered. According to WagerWire, the true value of his ticket was more than $171,000.
UPDATE: Wayne just cashed out his $100 to win $1.7m Thunder parlay for $80k… a cashout offer $90,500 below the bets full value of $171,460 https://t.co/IHbnSjYfiz pic.twitter.com/phOemg0fnr
— WagerWire (@WagerWire) May 14, 2024
And apparently there were offers for more than that amount. After Shelton announced his cash out, PropSwap tweeted that his ticket would have sold for $201,000 on the sports betting marketplace site.
“We had plenty of buyers ready to purchase.”
This would have sold for $201,717 using odds of +750. We had plenty of buyers ready to purchase. Next time! https://t.co/tbkt1oqMoO
— PropSwap (@PropSwap) May 14, 2024
You can only hope DraftKings sweetened the pot for Shelton outside of the cash-out option to make him take the $80,000. He certainly earned it with all the free publicity he gave them.