Drake

Drake didn't look like a man nursing a bruised ego so much as a man trying to talk himself down.

In an Instagram post shared after the Super Bowl, the Canadian rapper told followers he was 'off sports betting'—a small, almost throwaway sentence that landed like a confession. Alongside it, he posted a clip of himself playing online roulette, adding that he was 'sticking to what' he knows.

That detail matters because it punctures the familiar myth of the celebrity high-roller: the problem isn't the money, not really. It's the impulse, the performance, the rush of telling millions of people you're putting seven figures on a hunch and daring the universe to blink first.​

The universe, as ever, did not blink.

Drake had publicly revealed before the game that he'd placed a $1 million moneyline bet on the New England Patriots to beat the Seattle Seahawks, sharing a screenshot that showed a potential payout of $2.95 million.

He captioned it with a smug little provocation—'Bet against me if you dare'—an obvious nod to the long-running 'Drake Curse' joke that tends to surface whenever he publicly backs a team. When Seattle won 29–13, the wager vanished into the same void as so many of his viral slips: dramatic, expensive, and entirely self-inflicted.

Drake Sports Betting And The $1 Million Super Bowl Loss

The story has been treated, in the way the internet treats most things, as a punchline. But it's also a neat case study in how celebrity gambling has been normalised, glamourised and packaged as content.

The Seahawks didn't just edge it; they dominated. NBC Sports' recap described a defence that battered Patriots quarterback Drake Maye, while Kenneth Walker carried Seattle's offence. CBS Sports, in its live coverage, highlighted a late defensive touchdown that effectively buried New England in the fourth quarter.

Even if you knew nothing about Xs and Os, you could read the final score and see the shape of the night: this wasn't a tragic last-second loss. It was a long, grinding humiliation.

And in that context, Drake's wager reads less like bravado and more like a brand ritual: post the bet, feed the narrative, collect the engagement. When it hits, he looks fearless; when it fails, he becomes a meme with a receipt.

Drake Sports Betting And The 'Drake Curse' As Content

The 'curse' itself began as fan mischief, a running gag tethered to the strange coincidence that teams Drake supports publicly have a habit of losing. It's not science.

It's not even superstition in any serious sense. It's social media storytelling, and Drake understands storytelling as well as anyone alive.​

But the pattern keeps being fed. Bleacher Report noted that he backed the Toronto Maple Leafs against the Florida Panthers in last year's Stanley Cup and they lost, and that he also picked the Kansas City Chiefs in last year's Super Bowl, where they fell to the Philadelphia Eagles. Those aren't footnotes; they're the breadcrumbs that keep the joke alive, and every time Drake posts another wager, he is effectively re-commissioning the same punchline.​

There's also a darker undercurrent: Drake's betting has been intertwined with a crypto-gambling brand, and the very public posting of huge stakes functions as marketing whether it's labelled that way or not.

In 2025, Drake himself acknowledged the other side of gambling, speaking publicly about massive betting losses and the compulsion built into the habit. That admission now sits awkwardly beside the roulette clip—because quitting one kind of gambling while showcasing another isn't exactly a clean break.

Still, there's a sliver of honesty in what he posted: the sense that even Drake can feel the floor drop out when the fun stops being fun. The question isn't whether he'll place another bet.

It's whether the platforms—and the culture—will keep treating this as harmless entertainment when millions of ordinary people are being trained, in real time, to see gambling as just another flex.

Originally published on IBTimes UK