LAS VEGAS — Circa Sports hosted a viewing party at BarCanada at the D Hotel-Casino in downtown Las Vegas Sunday as it feted the top finishers in its high-end football handicapping contests, Circa Sports Million II and Circa Survivor.
A contestant using the alias DSR90-1 won the $1 million top prize in Circa Sports Million, in which contestants paid $1,000 per entry and make five NFL picks a week against the contest spread. DSR90-1 went 4-1 in Week 17 with wins on the Steelers 8.5, Ravens -12 and Buccaneers -7 in the early games Sunday and Texans 7.5 in the afternoon games. His only loss was on the Dolphins 1 and finished the season with a record of 56-27-2 (67.5%)
By the time the party broke up after the Sunday Night Football game, DSR90-1 (a Las Vegas local from his contest entry) hadn’t returned any messages from the Circa crew, including a Tweet from @CircaSports that offered to send a limo to bring him downtown to celebrate.
The inaugural Survivor contest, in which contestants paid $1,000 per entry and made one NFL pick straight-up each week without being able to use any team twice, drew 1,390 entries and Circa owner Derek Stevens added a $1 million bonus to be split by everyone that went the full season undefeated (18-0, including a bonus “Thanksgiving Week”).
There were 35 alive entering NFL Week 17 and all ended up winning, so they will chop the $2.39 million prize pool at $68,285.71 apiece. Two contestants, TIM’S SUNSCREEN and LoveMyBaxter each had two winning entries, so those will collect $136,571.43.
TIM’S SUNSCREEN was a team of three guys who watched the early games at StadiumSwim at the Circa Resort. They had one easy winner with the Ravens as they ran over the Bengals 38-3, but had to sweat out the Browns’ 24-22 win as the Steelers scored a TD with 1:23 to play but failed on the 2-point conversion to tie the game.
There were mixed emotions at BarCanada as EX-FINANCE’s two partners were living and dying with each play while the other Survivors in the room were hoping they would lose.
LoveMyBaxter used Washington on both its entries and had to sweat out the Football Team’s 20-14 win over the Eagles on Sunday Night Football.
In the final week, there were 9 entrants who had the easy win with the Ravens while 9 also used the Colts and that wasn’t as easy as the one-win Jaguars put up a fight before the Colts pulled away to a 28-14 victory.
The biggest sweat of the eventual Survivor winners was probably THAWK, the sole Survivor that used the Vikings, who were challenged all game long by the Lions before pulling out a 37-35 victory.
