Sportsbooks across the nation are on the hunt for anyone who wants to bet on the New England Patriots in their primetime game with Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday.
The bookmakers haven't found many takers.
As of Thursday at Caesars Sportsbook, only 2% of the point spread bets that had been placed, and 3% of the money that had been wagered, were on the Patriots. The action was lopsided everywhere:
• 94% of the bets and 96% of the money is on the Buccaneers at sportsbook PointsBet.
• 95% of the bets and 95% of the money is on the Buccaneers at FanDuel.
• 90% of the bets and 95% of the money is on the Buccaneers at BetMGM.
The line opened at Tampa Bay -5.5 and grew to -7 on Thursday at most sportsbooks.
"The public thinks this is a mispriced line and should be bigger, so everyone is backing Tampa Bay," Jay Croucher, head of trading for PointsBet, said Thursday night.
Croucher said that after moving the line to +7 he had seen a few bets on the Patriots, but added "we'll definitely be cheering for the Patriots on Sunday night."
At Circa Sports, a Las Vegas sportsbook known to cater to professional bettors and offer large betting limits, the action also was lopsided on the Bucs, but mostly from an accumulation of smaller bets.
"None of the heavy hitters have weighed in yet," Circa sportsbook manager Chris Bennett told ESPN in a text message Thursday afternoon.
It's not usual to have lopsided action on games during the week, when the volume is low. PointsBet estimates 95% of its NFL bets come on the weekend. The increased volume closer to kickoff often helps bookmakers even out the action to a degree.
Through the first three weeks this season at Caesars Sportsbook, eight teams had attracted similar one-sided action on the point spread (90+ percent) that Tampa Bay is seeing. However, when Caesars updated its numbers before the early kickoffs on Sunday morning, only one of those teams -- the Cardinals last week against the Jaguars -- had attracted greater than 90% of the money wagered.
Still, bookmakers said what they were seeing this week on the Buccaneers was extreme.
"Not only has it been one-way traffic on the Bucs, but more money has come in on the Bucs side than any other market on the board Sunday," Zach Schlouch, sportsbook manager for BetRivers, told ESPN. "That's atypical for this point in the week."
Even the Rhode Island Lottery's sportsbook, which is the closet legal betting option to Foxborough, Massachusetts and is regularly inundated with bets on New England, had more action on the Buccaneers than the Patriots. Brady's return to New England had generated four times as much betting action as the second-most heavily-bet game (Chiefs-Eagles) this week, according to Rhode Island Lottery spokesperson Paul Grimaldi.
"The Patriots almost always generate more interest than their opponent," Grimaldi told ESPN. "This was especially true when Tom Brady was with the team."
Now, Brady is in Tampa Bay, of course, and the regional love for betting the Patriots has decreased, Grimaldi said. The Buccaneers have attracted more bets to win the Super Bowl than any other team at the Rhode Island Lottery sportsbook. The Patriots have the second-most Super Bowl bets.