Before Week 4, a FanDuel user tried something almost nobody ever pulls off.
Picking the winner of every NFL game.
All 16 of them. One parlay. $1 to win $6,705.
That's 6,700 to 1. The kind of ticket you screenshot as a joke.
Then Thursday night hit.
Then the London Sunday morning game.
Then the 1pm slate. All of them.
Then the late window. Still alive.
Then Sunday night. Still alive.
By Monday morning, he was 15 for 15. 🤯
One game left. MNF - Falcons @ Saints.
Atlanta was the underdog (+122).
If the Falcons won, his $1 turned into $6,705.
If they lost, he got nothing.
That afternoon, FanDuel put a number on his screen.
$2,277. Cash out now.
All day he had to sit with it. Take a guaranteed $2,277?
Or ride a road underdog for $6,705?
He took the $2,277.
The Falcons won.
That's not a knock on him. $2,277 off one dollar is genuinely incredible.
You have better odds being born on Leap Day.
Almost anyone would think hard about that offer.
But there's something most bettors never ask.
Why was that button there in the first place?
And was $2,277 actually a fair price?
I can tell you, because I used to work on the other side of it.
What I saw from the inside...
I helped launch the DraftKings sportsbook app.
Users who cashed out a lot got a tag internally.
These users weren't a problem. They were a segment to grow.
We were always looking for ways to push cash out more. The reason was simple: cash out increases margin.
Every time someone hits that button, the book makes money on a bet it already had the edge on.
Was $2,277 a fair offer?
The Falcons were around +122. The Saints were around -150.
Remove the vig and Atlanta had roughly a 43% chance to win.
43% of $6,700 is about $2,850. That's what his ticket was really worth before kickoff.
The book offered $2,277.
So he paid roughly $600 to skip the sweat. Not crazy. But that $600 went straight to the book, on a game it no longer had to worry about.
What cash out really is
Cash out isn't "collecting early."
It's selling your ticket back to the book.
They're the only buyer. They set the price.
Every open bet has a fair value: your payout times your real chance of winning from here.
The book knows that number. It just doesn't show it to you.
The receipts
Sportradar powers the cash out engine for a lot of sportsbooks.
Its own API documentation says every bet returns two numbers:
- a "fair cashout"
- a "margin-adjusted cashout"
Operators are told which one to show you: "The recommended value to display... is the margin-adjusted value."
The fair price exists. It gets calculated. Then it's kept off your screen.
It goes further. The same docs say that if a bettor's "late bets score or bot score is high," the operator may "reduce the offer slightly."
So the better you are, the worse your offer gets.
The 50 cent rule
Jack at Unabated has bet professionally for 20 years.
His rule of thumb: in live, in-game spots, cash out offers are often no more than 50% of what your bet is really worth.
Take the bettor known as "Teflon Don." In 2024 he put $5 on a 7-leg home run parlay at FanDuel.
It paid $196,594.
Six of the seven guys homered. Only Mookie Betts was left.
- What his ticket was really worth: about $24,574
- What FanDuel offered: $12,328
He held. The offer dropped to $4,652. Still about half his real equity.
He cashed out.
Betts homered in the 9th.
The lesson isn't that he guessed wrong. It's that every offer he saw was about 50 cents on the dollar.
That isn't a glitch. That's the product.
The parlay test
Here's a simple way to see the markup for yourself.
$200 on a 5-leg parlay paying over $16K. The first three legs hit at +440, +100 and +100.
FanDuel offers $3,820 to cash out.
Now go to FanDuel and build a brand-new parlay with just those same three legs.
It pays $4,320.
The cash out pays $500 less than if the ticket had simply ended after leg three.
You're not just giving up the last two legs. You're paying extra on top of that.
They win on both sides
This is the part most people never think about.
Picture an NFL game. You bet $100 on one team at +100. Someone else bets $120 on the other team at -120.
The book is holding $220.
Fourth quarter. Your team is up 10 with 8 minutes left. Roughly 90% to win.
- Your ticket is worth about $180. The book offers you $150.
- Their ticket is worth about $22. The book offers them $10.
You both cash out. The book pays out $160.
It keeps $60 with the game still being played and zero risk left.
At fair prices it would have kept about $18.
It doesn't matter who wins. The book already did.
Why every book pushes it
- You pay the margin twice. You paid the vig to get in. The cash out price has it baked in again to get out.
- It cleans up their risk cheaply. A parlay 15 legs deep is a real liability for the book. Cash out lets them buy it back below value.
- They control when it's available. Big moment in the game? Cash out suspended. That's usually when you'd want it most.
- It fits how people bet. Most of us lock in small wins and let losing bets ride. Cash out trims the winners and does nothing for the losers.
- It keeps money in the app. A cashed-out balance is one tap away from the next live bet.
- It's marketed on purpose. Betfair launched Cash Out in 2013 with a full ad campaign. It hit a million cash outs in nine months. Every US book copied it.
Nobody builds and advertises a feature that loses them money.
When cashing out makes sense
This isn't "never cash out." Sometimes it's the right call. Just know what you're paying for it.
- When the money would change your life. In 2024 a DraftKings bettor had a $100 futures parlay on the Rangers, Chiefs and Thunder. It was live for $1.7 million. He cashed out for $80,960. "I'm a single dad and the money will be wonderful," he said. The Thunder lost that series. He made the right call for him.
- When you can't afford to hedge. Hedging at another book usually locks in more. But it takes cash up front. Our Falcons bettor could have bet about $4,000 on the Saints elsewhere and guaranteed roughly $2,680 either way. That's $400 more than the cash out. But most people don't have $4,000 sitting in another sportsbook on a Monday night. If you don't, cash out may be your only way to lock it in.
- When the sweat would wreck you. If riding it out will ruin your week, peace of mind is worth something. Just treat it like what it is: insurance, and the book sets the premium.
- When the book is slow. Sometimes the market moves and the cash out price doesn't catch up. Injury news, a line jump, a stale number. If the offer is above fair value, take it. That's the book's mistake, not yours.
- When the book lets you cancel for free. A few books let you cancel before the game starts for a full or nearly full refund. That's a free option on late news.
How to check any offer
Before you hit the button, ask two things.
What's my bet really worth right now? Check odds on the other side at a few books. Remove the vig. Multiply your payout by your real win chance.
Can I lock it in for more somewhere else? Like the Falcons bettor above, a hedge at another book often guarantees more than the cash out does.
If the cash out beats both, take it. Usually it won't.
The bigger point
Cash out isn't a one-off. It's how the whole industry works.
Boosts that are worse than they look. Same-game parlays with stacked hold. Limits for winners. VIP hosts for losers.
Every feature in that app answers to one question: does this grow our margin?
I've sat in those meetings. If a feature made bettors money over time, it wouldn't survive the next roadmap review.
The book isn't your friend. It's the other side of every bet you make.
The green button is just another bet. The house wrote the odds.
Price it before you press it.
The book is always doing the math. Locktopus does it for you. We find where sportsbooks get it wrong and show you where to get the best odds. locktopusodds.com
