Four finalists wound up tying and splitting a record pot of $9,267,000 evenly among themselves in Circa Sports' season-long NFL survivor pool, the sportsbook announced Monday.
The quartet of champions – who competed under the aliases Circus Master, IndianaJet, Jax Jags, and LAJoneser – finished the season a perfect 20-0, with wins by the Bengals and Raiders on the season's final day sealing their happy fates. In survivor contests like Circa's, each contestant must pick a team to win straight up each week (in addition to a pair of bonus “weeks” on Thanksgiving/Black Friday and Christmas Day) without using the same team twice.
For The Win reported that the four finalists agreed before Sunday to a chop that would guarantee each of them at least $2 million, but with all correctly making their final pick, the tie meant each earned $2,316,750. This came roughly two weeks after after an extremely confident professional gambler named Sean Perry was the lone holdout preventing a chop agreement that would have guaranteed each of the final 13 contestants $400,000, with the remaining $4 million to go to the eventual winner.
This year's Circa Survivor contest drew a record 9,267 entries at a buy-in of $1,000 per entry (maximum 10 entries per person), with the sportsbook retaining no share of the fees as a rake. According to VSiN, the previous high was 6,133 entries the year before when two winners walked off with $3,066,500 apiece, a record that still stands.
A celebration is in order! ??