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Doug Greenberg, ESPN
Every year, millions of Americans participate in the NFL’s “Survivor” contests, a simple but difficult-to-master format in which contestants pick one team per week to win a game, with the caveat that the team cannot be selected again that season. Many groups between friends or colleagues use contests as a way to casually bet with each other, while some companies use them to engage fans; ESPN’s free Eliminator Challenge attracted 942,806 entries this year.
But what would normally be a fun diversion for casual and hardcore bettors alike has been a nightmare to start the 2024 season. Favorites of six or more points this season, generally the most reliable teams to pick for survivor pools, have posted a stunningly poor 5-7 record through three weeks. The underdogs overall have racked up 15 outright wins over the past two weeks. This trend has wreaked havoc on survivors’ bathrooms.
The top-picked team in the Eliminator Challenge has lost every week so far, and in Week 3, four of the top five selected teams lost. This resulted in a drop of 77.2% of remaining entries last week bringing the total removal rate to 94.5% to start the year, leaving only 52,049 entries (5.5%) remaining. For context, since 2020, the previous three-week low for survivors was 60,690 out of 503,963 entries (12%) in 2022.
The carnage wasn’t easier for high-stakes players either. Circa Survivor, a $1,000 buy-in competition based in Las Vegas, attracted a record 14,266 entries for the winner(s) – earning a prize pool of $14,266,000 this year, leaving only 642 entries remaining for an elimination rate of 95.5%, easily the highest In the competition’s five-year history.
“I’ve been playing different types of these pools for probably 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Circa Sports owner and CEO Derek Stevens told ESPN. “It always seems easier than it is, but this is uniquely different. No one would have ever expected the Cincinnati Bengals to go 0-3. No one would have expected the Carolina Panthers to suffer an upset on the road if they did.” “They already drafted their quarterback by Week 3.”
Since Circa Survivor began in the 2020 season, the competition has come a long way and has had several winners every year. It came close to one champion in 2022 when two participants made it to Week 18. In 2021 and 2023, the contest took until after Week 10 to reach fewer than 642 entries, where it currently is.
This has been a tough pill to swallow for the thousands at Circa and the millions across the country who have stopped playing.
“I’ve probably talked to 20 riders over the last 48 hours. You could say Monday was Black Monday and Tuesday was Black Tuesday,” Stevens said. “When you play something like this for such a huge amount and then you lose, that feeling you get, that empty feeling, that pit in your stomach… it’s a bad feeling,” he added.
Stevens attributes much of the loss to increased parity in the NFL and questionable perceptions of teams, noting that there has not been a single double-digit points favorite through three weeks. He says he believes there is still time to normalize the Survivor formula and achieve results in line with what it has seen in previous years.
“These 642 guys have good teams because they obviously avoided some good teams that upset them early on,” he said. “Every year for the last four years of Circa Survivor, there have been at least seven weeks where 4% or less of the contestants have been eliminated. I don’t see that necessarily changing because you have some teams that really show the truth that they’re not that good; You have some teams that are going to go through some big struggles because of some injuries.
