Drake has lost over $500,000 (£393,000) after betting that Tyson Fury would win the recent boxing match against Oleksandr Usyk.
The rapper made the bet ahead of the match last Saturday (May 18), and shared a screenshot of a gambling slip on Instagram Stories – proving that he’d put a staggering $565,000 (£444,000) on Fury’s name via the online casino Stake.
However, following Usyk proving victorious and becoming the undisputed heavyweight champion, the rapper has lost the huge sum.
The victory was a close call, and Billboard highlighted how a judge at Kingdom Arena in Saudi Arabia originally scored the match 114-113 in Fury’s favour. This was then overturned by the two other judges who favoured Usyk 114-113 and 115-112, respectively.
If Fury had taken home the win on the night, Drake would have had a payout of just over $1million (£786,600) from the bet.
Drake bets $565K on Tyson Fury to beat undefeated Oleksandr Usyk pic.twitter.com/I8G4Os4dEK
— HipHopDX (@HipHopDX) May 18, 2024
The rapper is no stranger to placing large bets on sporting events, and has gathered a reputation in recent years for frequently losing huge amounts of money thanks to the “Drake curse”.
Last summer, for instance, the rapper lost $250k after betting on UFC legend Nate Diaz during a boxing match between him and Jake Paul. Just months earlier, he shared that he wagered nearly $1million (£829,500) in “psychotic” bets for the 2023 Super Bowl.
Back in 2022, the ‘Hotline Bling’ artist seemingly lost $1million on a World Cup bet after Argentina beat France. If he had made the right call for the match, he would have won roughly $2.75m (£2.26m).
That same year, it was reported that FC Barcelona fell victim to the notorious “Drake curse” after the rapper bet on them to win their game against Real Madrid.
Ahead of the match on October 16, Drake took to Instagram to share proof of a bet he posted for $833,333 Canadian dollars (£537,000) on both Arsenal and Barcelona to win their games that day.
While Arsenal were victorious in a 1-0 win against Leeds, later in the day Barcelona lost 3-1 to Real Madrid, seeing Drake lose over half a million pounds. A win for Barca would have won him nearly £2.5m.
His famous losses as part of the “curse” stem back as far as 2015, when he had to fork out £4,000 ($6,000) to fellow rapper The Game after losing a bet over a basketball game.
The Toronto-born star bet The Game that the Kentucky Wildcats would beat the Wisconsin Badgers, but the Badgers won the match 71-64.
That being said, back in 2019 many speculated that Drake used his “curse” to his advantage after seemingly ensuring that the Philadelphia 76ers lost a crunch game against his beloved Toronto Raptors.
In other Drake news, the Canadian rapper has been making headlines in recent weeks for his feud with Kendrick Lamar.
Both have been sharing a number of diss tracks over the past month, and making increasingly heavy accusations about the other’s personal life and relationships.
After the conflict escalated with Lamar’s verse on ‘Like That’, Drake fired back with two tracks ‘Push Ups’ and ‘Taylor Made Freestyle‘.
He then landed in hot water after he used AI to emulate Tupac Shakur‘s vocals, leading to the late rapper’s estate threatening legal action. He subsequently removed the track from streaming.
Lamar would then respond with ‘Euphoria‘ on May 1, following it up quickly the following day with ‘6:16 in LA’. The pair then dropped new diss tracks within an hour of each other, with Drake releasing ‘Family Matters’ just before Lamar clapped back with ‘Meet The Grahams’.
More recently, Drake claimed he fed Lamar false intel on new diss ‘The Heart Part 6’, but the track hasn’t been popular with fans – recently surpassing 1million dislikes on YouTube.
