Circa Millions: Predicting Popularity in the Pick Five Contest

We analyze 2024–25 Circa Millions picks to predict popularity, spot public dogs, and find leverage. Top picks have underperformed; learn when to fade.

by Jason Lisk - Nov 12, 2025

(Photo by Jeffrey Brown/Icon Sportswire)

The Circa Millions contest is a Pick Five contest where picks are made against a contest spread set on Thursdays. There is a $1,000 fee for each entry, with both season-long and segment prizes. It has become the largest single handicapping spread pool in Las Vegas, surpassing the Westgate SuperContest in recent years.

We have analyzed the data from picks made in all of 2024 and the first half of 2025 to investigate whether there are any indicators that can help predict contest popularity. This may also have ramifications for “sharper” spread pools where entrants are risking more money.

Why Care About Pick Popularity in Circa Millions?

You might wonder why we care to try to predict popularity in the contest. Here’s why:

1. You can get leverage when you are correct and the crowd is wrong. It’s a contest against other people, so like lots of peer-to-peer games, you can increase leverage by picking in a way that when popular picks fail, you can gain more relative ground.
2. The popular picks have been fade-worthy. That’s especially true over the last year and a half in the contest.

Now let’s test it. Do the most popular picks actually underperform in this contest? The short answer is yes, especially over the last 18 months. Here’s the track record:

How Bad Have Popular Picks Been?

The top 5 most popular picks have gone 61-73-1 (45.6%) against the contest line.

If you had picked all of the top 5 each week, you would have only had a winning week in 8 of the 27 weeks from the start of 2024 through Week 9, 2025.

Two Most Popular Picks: Even Worse

And while the Top 5 is the easy summary point, it’s really been “avoid the most popular picks” as represented by the Top 2. The two most popular picks weekly have gone 22-31-1 ATS over that span. The next three most popular picks (numbers 3-5 each week, are just barely under 50%).

So if you can identify who might have outsized popularity, you can gain both leverage and, based on recent history, be more likely to be on the good side in the contest.

Pick Rates By Contest Spread Number

Are there certain types of lines and games that draw more picks? As it turns out, the answer is “Yes.”

Here’s a chart showing the average popularity at various Contest Line spreads (excluding the Thursday/Friday games).

• Because of limited sample sizes at individual spreads, all games with a spread of -9/+9 or more are lumped together at the -10/+10 line on the chart (29 games fell into those buckets).
• We can see that popularity peaks for favorites of under a touchdown. More specifically, the peaks are both around favorites of near a field goal, and favorites of around 5.5 points.
• We also see a spike at underdogs of under a field goal, specifically at +2.
• Dogs of more than a field goal are usually unpopular, as are bigger favorites of double-digits.

Separating Out Popularity by Day of Game

Here is the popularity, separated by whether the game was played early (Wednesday/Thursday/Friday) in the pick week or later.

We also separated out the Sunday Night game from other games. People love the primetime Sunday game, and when available late in the year, some late Saturday games after the pick submission deadline.