The NFL’s Week 18 turned eight lucky Circa Survivor contestants into millionaires on Sunday.
That’s all that remained from the 14,266 entries in the season-long contest. The winning group took home $1.78 million each.
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2024 20-0 Winners
📄 Winners: https://t.co/rf0rWjauqq pic.twitter.com/xqfK4xHUgy
Eighteen participants were left vying for the $14.26 million prize pool heading into the final regular-season slate of the season-long contest.
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Week 18 Selections
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Five of the eight winning contestants sweated out a tough win by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who were down 16-6 at halftime but rallied for a 27-19 win. The Saints had the ball in Tampa territory with a chance to tie the game with a touchdown and two-point conversion in the final seconds, before the Bucs got one last defensive stop.
Two other contestants who selected Indianapolis watched another overtime affair as the Colts beat the Jacksonville Jaguars 26-23. Colts star Jonathan Taylor rushed for 177 yards, including a 33-yard run that set up a 38-yard go-ahead field goal.
"It felt in that morning wave for 17 people where there was a chance we could go into the 1 o'clock games with the person that had the (Arizona) Cardinals staring down the barrel of $14 million," Jeffrey Benson, Circa's director of operations, told Covers.
"There was a 20- to 30-minute window where every game was within one score, some of the teams were trailing ... I mean, you just couldn't write a more perfect, storybook ending to the year."
In the afternoon window, the Cardinals throttled the San Francisco 49ers 47-24 to easily turn one participant into a millionaire.
So close
However, 44% of the remaining entries were eliminated when the Atlanta Falcons lost 44-38 in overtime to the Carolina Panthers.
Atlanta needed a home win and a Bucs loss to win the division and make the playoffs, but Tampa secured the win right after the Falcons tied the game to go into overtime, where they never touched the ball.
Another two entries were left out of a million-dollar payday when the Chicago Bears kicked a late field goal to edge the Green Bay Packers 24-22 on Sunday.
It was an unlikely win considering Chicago had lost 11 consecutive games to their rival, but the Packers lost quarterback Jordan Love and receiver Christian Watson to injury while running back Josh Jacobs sat out the rest of the game after scoring a touchdown in the second quarter.
Before the final week kicked off, there had been talk of the final 18 contestants chopping the prize pool, but it never materialized.
Record year
This season received the most entries of $1,000 since Circa Sports began the contest in 2020.
Each participant picked one team to win each week, with additional portions added during Thanksgiving and Christmas. Thus, the eight winners picked 20 consecutive outright victories. No NFL team could be used more than once.
Circa Survivor got off to a wild start with early upsets to the Baltimore Ravens and Cincinnati Bengals eliminating large chunks of teams in the first two weeks. By the end of Week 5, only 1.5% of the total entries remained, the lowest percentage heading into Week 6 in the contest’s history.
There were 35 winners in the first year of the contest, five the following year, two in 2022, and four in last year's contest. After what Benson said was a "diabolical" start to this year's contest, he believed the number of Survivor winners was deserved.
"Given the relative field size of 14,266, I think that was a pretty accurate reflection of how the NFL season played out and how many people were left," he said.
The survivor contest has grown by $5 million in entry fees on an annual basis, and Circa expects more of the same next season.
"I anticipate next year we'll guarantee a bigger amount than we guaranteed this year, north of $20 million," Benson said.
