The surprising smash hit 4 Nations Face-Off finished with a bang on Thursday night when Canada defeated the United States 3-2 in overtime to claim the international tournament’s championship. In the process, the final became the most-bet hockey event in legal betting history.
On Friday morning, BetMGM, DraftKings and FanDuel reported that the 4 Nations Face-Off championship game was their most-bet hockey event of all time by total tickets, with DraftKings adding that it also attained the highest handle of any hockey event ever. Caesars and ESPN BET said the game fell just short of their records — held by the 2024 Stanley Cup Final Game 7 between Edmonton and Florida — but put up amazing numbers for a mid-February hockey contest.
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“Handle for the 4 Nations Final surpassed last year’s World Series games and was on par with Sunday afternoon NFL games, which is remarkable when comparing the general scale of hockey and football betting,” ESPN BET director of North American sports trading Adrian Horton said via email.
Saturday’s first matchup between USA and Canada had previously been the most-bet hockey game of the season, but Thursday night’s finale attracted about double the amount of money at ESPN BET and 2½ times the number of bets at BetMGM.
Bettors largely wagered along country lines in the championship, with ESPN BET reporting 79% of bets and 77% of handle on USA’s money line, while the sportsbook’s Canadian counterpart, theScore BET (also owned by Penn Entertainment), saw 84% of tickets and 87% of money backing Canada’s money line; the game went off as a consensus pick ’em at -110 for each side.
BetMGM saw slightly fewer bets and less handle backing the Americans, but it was still a majority that, combined with the high volume, made Canada’s victory a “good outcome for the sportsbook,” per the sportsbook’s trading manager Halvor Egeland.
As a whole, the 4 Nations Face-Off was a massive success for the sports betting industry. ESPN BET said that its four most-bet hockey games of the season were the United States’ four games, with BetMGM adding that five of its top seven highest-bet hockey events of the season came from the tournament.
“The NHL absolutely nailed it with the 4 Nations Face-Off,” DraftKings sportsbook director Johnny Avello told ESPN over text message. “Bettors saw how seriously the players took it and reacted accordingly. Every game of this tournament yielded significant action.”
While bookmakers are expecting an initial rush of bets when the NHL returns on Saturday, the league could see its usual lull once college basketball heats up heading into March Madness. That said, the recent big stage for high-stakes hockey could create a bigger boom as teams compete for the Stanley Cup.
“I really think it’ll ramp right back up again once we get to the playoffs, especially if we can get some fun matchups,” Karry Shreeve, Caesars Sportsbook’s head of hockey, told ESPN. “I think the playoffs can really ride off of this momentum more than maybe the rest of the regular season as a whole.”
