Bettor Won Over $500k on Fairleigh Dickinson’s Upset of Purdue

The Knights scored the largest point-spread upset in men's NCAA Tournament history.
Bettor Won Over $500k on Fairleigh Dickinson’s Upset of Purdue
Bettor Won Over $500k on Fairleigh Dickinson’s Upset of Purdue /

Fairleigh Dickinson's stunning upset of Purdue in the first round of the men’s NCAA tournament busted brackets across the country, as the lowest-seeded team in the field defeated a team that had spent seven weeks this season ranked No. 1.

However, it also made one bettor very wealthy.

A bettor placed $33,000 on the Knights to defeat the Boilermakers at +1500 odds Friday evening, according to a Saturday morning tweet from Darren Rovell of The Action Network. The successful bet paid out an astonishing $528,000, a $495,000 windfall on one of the biggest upsets in the history of North American sports.

Before the game, Fairleigh Dickinson was a 23.5-point underdog to the Big Ten regular season and tournament champion. The upset was the largest by point spread in the history of the men’s NCAA Tournament—2.5 points more than the previous largest upset, by Norfolk State over Missouri in 2012, and 3.5 more than UMBC's legendary win over Virginia in 2018.


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Patrick Andres
PATRICK ANDRES

Patrick Andres is a staff writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. He joined SI in December 2022, having worked for The Blade, Athlon Sports, Fear the Sword and Diamond Digest. Andres has covered everything from zero-attendance Big Ten basketball to a seven-overtime college football game. He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism with a double major in history .