It is fascinating to hear about the gambling stories of celebrities. The main reason for that is that stars from the world of sports, music, and movies play with bankrolls of unfathomable size. They can risk single bets of more money than most people will ever see in a lifetime.
Most celebrity gambling goes on behind doors in exclusive casino VIP rooms, but some celebrity gamblers draw major public attention for their sports betting, like Canadian artist Drake. The singer has become something of a trend, because of some very big losses, to the point that some believe that any team he bets on is cursed and will lose. But how much truth is there in this?
The most common way to do sports betting now is online. The online gambling industry is huge, and there is a wealth of platforms available to do it on. Let's take the UK betting market, for example, which is one of the most developed in the world. Just have a look at the betting sites on Legalbet.uk, an expert platform that reviews and compares sportsbooks in Britain. You’ll find around 100 licensed online operators, each offering different deals and a wide range of betting markets. Most players don’t even need to leave home to back their favourite team.
But where do celebrities place sports bets? They could, of course, be doing it online from home as well, but when you hear about major sports bets, they are typically done at a sportsbook within a casino. Why? Because a casino can absorb the risk, but of course, it too will have its limits where high-roller stakes have to be vetted and approved.
What is the Drake Curse about, and where did it come from? It is a meme which emerged from Drake’s love of sports betting. The issue was that Drake suffered some significant losses along the way, which painted him as being unlucky for those teams and athletes he would bet on.
This, however, is no surprise. High-profile losses in sports betting by celebrities usually come at a massive loss of stake, as is the case with Drake, who tends to bet a lot bigger and take bigger risks than the Average Joe. It’s because of this, the losses went viral.
Adding to the lore of the Drake Curse was the nature of his bets, because he suffered some high-profile betting losses on favourites. So people started to believe that Drake could curse teams and athletes simply by betting on them.
This Drake Curse is, of course, absolute nonsense. There is no way that one person betting on the outcome of a sporting fixture has any kind of influence over that particular result. It is nothing more than an internet meme mixed with a bit of superstition.
While superstitions exist in sports, like a soccer player putting their socks on in a certain order, they cannot influence sports results and bets. The only thing that is mixed up in all of it is Lady Luck, which makes sports so dramatic.
There is a website called “TheDrakeCurse.com” which is dedicated to tracking the public gambling record of Drake. It does a fantastic job of showing where the myth came from while simultaneously debunking it. It reports back that seven notable bets from Drake have led to the talk of him being cursed.
Among the biggest of those is when Drake backed Aljamain Sterling at UFC 292 at a quote of around 1.4 (approximately a 70% win probability) and lost. In another UFC bet, Drake reportedly lost $1.59M when his bet on Israel Adesanya lost when Adesanya was beaten by Alex Pereira.
There was also a public losing streak by Drake between August 2022 and January 2023, when he lost nine wagers in a row for a total loss of $4.69M, and that helped perpetuate the talk of a curse. But on the flip side, he banked $3.7M in a great run of success when seven major bets in a row came home during a betting run in 2023.
That just highlights betting in a nutshell, because all bettors have wins and losses. Sometimes that happens in streaks which often puts things in a very different perspective. Drake is a very high roller when it comes to sports betting, which has predominantly been on MMA and American football.
But he is reportedly $1.9M up from the public sports bets that he has made, wagering $34.2 M and returning $36.1M profit. As for any Drake Curse, it is fun to follow along with, and as his recent $500K+ win on the Indian Premier League Final showed, he is far from cursed and certainly doesn’t curse teams.