It was 2008 in the Montreal office of a popular online sports book. Marc was the new guy in the bookmaking department. He was getting ready to have the biggest gambling sweat of his young career.
Marc was working for a book that loves mainstream media attention. The marketing team force-fed the oddsmakers zany prop ideas about anything that was generating media buzz. That summer, longtime game-show Wheel of Fortune announced it would be offering its first $1 million prize during the upcoming season. The marketing team wanted odds on a contestant winning. Marc was on it.
“Twenty-four spaces on the wheel, and 24 spaces on the prize wheel,” he thought. “It’s essentially a two-team parlay with added stipulations. In order to win the million, you had to land on the million dollar slot during the main game play, win that puzzle thus saving the piece, which then activated the million dollar prize on the final puzzle, which also had to be solved correctly.”
He came up with 550-to-1 odds of a contestant winning the million-dollar prize that year. There was no way he was offering 550-to-1 on a media prop, so he decided on 30-to-1. He posted the numbers, fired off an email to his bosses explaining his thinking and headed out for the weekend.
When he returned on Monday, something had gone wrong. A rush of money had come in on “Yes.” The odds had plummeted to 5-to-1. The book was facing $40,000 in liability on a throw-away media prop.
“At this point, I’m shitting my pants,” Marc said. “That’s quite a liability on a media prop.”
Everyone in the office knew of the situation. One of the office TVs normally dedicated to baseball now showed Wheel of Fortune. The first episode went by without incident. The second one did not.
Marc was sitting at his desk when a colleague came in and alerted him that someone was going for the million. The final puzzle was coming up. Everyone gathered around.
With little trouble, Michelle Loewenstein, a 24-year-old newlywed from Santa Monica, Calif., correctly solved “Leaky Faucet” on the final puzzle. Host Pat Sajak opened the prize envelope. The million-dollar prize was revealed.
“We all watched,” Marc recalled. “It happened. I lost my shit, tipping over chairs and anything not bolted down while saying the most terrible of things. I had just lost $40,000 company dollars because of Wheel of Fortune. My job was clearly on the line.”
The next day, Marc was called into his boss’s office. It was an unpleasant discussion, but it ended with the boss saying, “We’d have fired you if you didn’t send out the email explaining your pricing beforehand.”
Marc was relieved. He had been saved by the negligence of others. But the kicker came a week later.
The marketing guy responsible for the Wheel of Fortune odds request stopped by the oddsmakers’ office. Marc razzed him about how much it had cost the company and how much trouble it had caused him.
The marketing person looked at Marc and said, “Oh, the Wheel of Fortune prop? I completely forgot to send that out to our contacts in the media.”
There have been roughly 1,250 episodes since Loewenstein won the million dollar prize. Only one other contestant has won the grand prize. A contestant just this week needed to solve a puzzle that was already filled in to earn a chance to play for the million dollars but mis-pronounced the answer and lost.
Marc is still working as an oddsmaker, albeit at a different sportsbook. You can follow him on Twitter @AnonymousGamblr.
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