Vegas bookmaking exec speculates bettors had tip on Brady decision
Superbook’s Jay Kornegay believes inside information played role in big bets on Bucs
Tom Brady’s decision to come out of retirement after less than two months away from the game shocked the football world, but Las Vegas bookmaking executive Jay Kornegay has suggested there were at least some people who were aware of the decision well before Brady made it public on March 13.
That’s because Kornegay, who serves as VP of race and sports operations for the Westgate Superbook, saw his sportsbook take multiple large bets on the Buccaneers to win next year’s Super Bowl three days before Brady announced his intention to return to Tampa Bay.
As of March 10, the Superbook had the Bucs listed at 60-1 odds to win the 2023 Super Bowl and 30-1 to capture the NFC title.
It was at that point that a sharp bettor made significant wagers on each market, which resulted in Superbook oddsmakers adjusting Tampa Bay’s Super Bowl odds to 25-1.
The lower price didn’t deter the bettor, who bet the Bucs again for a sizable sum arousing the suspicion of Kornegay.
“There’s not a doubt in my mind that they knew he was coming back when they placed those wagers on [March 10],”
Kornegay said in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “And these were not casual bettors. They would be categorized as educated bettors.
“It wasn’t a guy with a Tom Brady jersey at the counter. It was a player that we would describe as sharp. With that type of play and the announcement we heard [March 13] that he was unretiring, there was information that was shared prior to his official announcement.”
Kornegay went on to detail his concern around inside information being shared for potential gain by in-the-know bettors, calling for the NFL to investigate the matter further.
The situation represents a particularly slippery slope for the NFL, which named Caesars, DraftKings and FanDuel as official tri-exclusive partners in April 2021 before approving an additional four operators – FOX Bet, BetMGM, PointsBet and WynnBET – as secondary partners in August.
The NFL declined to comment in response to Kornegay’s allegations, but the league’s now inextricable link to sports betting is something it will almost certainly have to address going forward should a similar scenario arise.