UFC 329: Drake's $1M on McGregor, and $3.4M of Whale Money on a Five-Year Comeback

UPDATE, 12 July: the fight is over. McGregor wrecked his knee on an opening flying kick and lost to Holloway by TKO in 69 seconds. The $4.29M of whale money on McGregor, including the $1M ticket below, is gone. Read the full results and settlement breakdown.

Conor McGregor walks to a UFC cage tonight for the first time since he snapped his leg at UFC 264 in July 2021. Five years is a long time to be away from a sport that does not wait for anyone, and the betting markets have priced it accordingly: he is the underdog against Max Holloway, at odds drifting between 2.85 and 2.95.

The whale money disagrees.

tail.bet has tracked $3.44 million in real high-roller bets across 19 tickets on UFC 329, and the split is not close. $2.07 million is on McGregor. $1.21 million is on Holloway. The big money is backing the man the bookmakers think will lose, and it is backing him at nearly 3.0.

The $1 million ticket, and the one Drake posted

The single biggest bet we have captured on this card is $1,001,000 on McGregor at 2.85, a ticket that returns $2,852,850 if the Irishman gets his hand raised.

That is, to the dollar, the bet Drake told the world he had placed. The rapper publicly posted a $1 million wager on McGregor this week, widely reported at a payout of roughly $2.85 million for a profit around $1.85 million. Same stake, same price, same return. Drake has made a habit of seven-figure bets on marquee fights, and he has lost enough of them that the “Drake curse” has become its own betting market. McGregor’s corner will be hoping the curse takes the night off.

The account that bet on both men

The $1,001,000 ticket did not come alone. The same account holds the three largest bets on the card, and they are not all pointing the same way.

Alongside the seven-figure McGregor bet, it added $500,500 more on McGregor at 2.85, worth another $1,426,425. That is a little over $1.5 million on a fighter who has not won since 2020.

Then it put $700,700 on Max Holloway at 1.45.

Add it up and that is $2.2 million in play across both corners of the same fight. It is not a hedge that locks in a profit. If McGregor wins, the account clears roughly $2.08 million. If Holloway wins, it is down about $1.19 million. What has been built is a heavily weighted McGregor position with a cushion underneath it: someone who wants the underdog badly, but is not willing to be wrong for the full amount.

The fourth-biggest bet on the card is another $482,270 on McGregor at 2.90, from a separate account. The pattern holds all the way down the list: the McGregor tickets are bigger and priced longer, the Holloway tickets are steadier and shorter.

The case the market is making

Holloway sits at 1.44 to 1.48 for good reason. He has fought continuously while McGregor has not fought at all, he is one of the most durable and highest-volume strikers the division has seen, and he is coming off a run that made him a champion at featherweight. The book thinks the layoff is decisive.

The whales are betting on the other thing. McGregor at 2.85 is a price on a man who, at his best, ended fights inside a round. You do not get that price on him when he is active. Someone is paying for the version of him that existed in 2015, and paying seven figures for it.

Note also that this is a welterweight bout. Holloway is moving up, well above the 145 pounds where he built his reputation, to meet a bigger man who has fought and won at 170. The one previous meeting between them, back in August 2013, went McGregor’s way on the scorecards, and he did it with a torn ACL.

The undercard money

The biggest bet outside the main event is $85,000 on Alessandro Costa at 1.43, a flyweight tucked deep down the card. That single ticket is larger than every McGregor bet except the top four.

There is also $52,529 on Mario Bautista at 2.16 to beat Cory Sandhagen, another underdog play at a real price, and $14,099 on Paddy Pimblett at 2.18 against Benoît Saint Denis in the co-main event, though that one has already been cashed out.

One more worth flagging: $10,025 on the fight finishing inside 2.5 rounds at 1.85. Someone is not expecting this to go the distance.

What settles tonight

Every one of these tickets is live. If McGregor’s hand goes up, more than $2 million in whale money gets paid out and one account collects the better part of $4.3 million in returns. If Holloway does what the market expects, the biggest single loss on the card is a $1,001,000 ticket, and a lot of nostalgia gets very expensive.

Every bet on this card is tracked as it lands on the UFC 329 page, the biggest tickets of the day are on the whale leaderboard, and the settled results hit Telegram and X as they grade. How we capture and grade the numbers is set out on the methodology page.