It was the night of Feb. 18 when Luca Fury first noticed something peculiar. As a professional gambler who bets almost solely on MMA, Fury had been watching the betting lines on the next night’s Bellator 149 co-main event between Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson and Dhafir “Dada 5000” Harris.

Oddsmakers, most of whom are relatively new to handicapping MMA, usually keep the action narrow – no overwhelming favorites. But this match was an exception. The celebrity Ferguson had opened as a huge -360 favorite to beat the relatively unknown Harris.

On that Thursday night, though, things suddenly started to change. Bets began flooding in on the underdog Harris, and the odds quickly shifted. By Friday morning, Ferguson dropped from a -360 favorite to just -160. A potential winning $100 bet on Ferguson more than doubled from a $27.79 payoff to $62.50.

The move was so dramatic, sports books in Las Vegas and online quickly stopped taking bets on the battle between the former bare-knuckle street-fighters.

“People panicked and assumed there was some type of fix or inside info going around,” Fury told MMAjunkie.

The 26-year-old gambler had seen a similar odds-shift and suspicion last November during a Korean bout between UFC lightweights Tae Hyun Bang and Leo Kuntz. To Fury, these two events weren’t an indication of corruption infiltrating MMA; they were signs of the increasing popularity of gambling on the sport.

“MMA has always been a smaller market, so the lines move off of much less action,” Fury said. “That amount of money might not have been enough to even move an NFL line.”

Fury said that’s because the enormous number of football bettors has forced experienced NFL oddsmakers to be more accurate with their lines – a challenge bookmakers might soon face as more and more bettors place money on MMA.

“The oddsmaking for this sport is somewhat in its infancy,” said Scott Cooley, odds consultant with BookMaker, an international online betting site. “Because of that, we’re going to create some bad lines.”

Cooley is a former sportswriter who has been around sports betting for almost two decades. He’s in his seventh year at BookMaker, and he said that in that time he’s seen MMA wagering take off online, especially among males age 18 to 34.

“Our research tells us that the MMA audience is a techie group, savvy with computers,” Cooley said. He reasons that is because there is more action during these fights than, say, a boxing match, both in the cage and in the sports books.

“There are more ways to win or lose,” he said. “During any given fight, after Round 1, clients can go into their account and wager on the fight or the next couple rounds. And they can win by different scenarios: submission, knockout. … It makes it a lot more fun and interesting.”

Those scoreable in-match variables – like number of significant strikes, takedowns, advancing positions and sweeps – also may be why MMA is on the come as a fantasy sport. DraftKings, one of the two largest worldwide fantasy sports sites, launched its MMA platform in 2014, and in February, the company added to its base of roughly 200,000 MMA players by acquiring combat-sport fantasy site Kountermove and its 30,000 registered users.

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Still, while Cooley says MMA betting is clearly on the uptick and has outpaced most secondary sports like hockey, tennis and golf, it still accounts for only about 5 percent of BookMaker’s business, trailing far behind football, baseball, basketball and soccer. Most people betting on MMA are hardcore fans and regular gamblers.

“It’s still more of a niche gambling arena,” Cooley said. “On Saturday night, casual bettors are still watching college football rather than buying a pay-per-view for $70.”

MMA’s search for the coveted casual bettor is also going on in Las Vegas, capital of both U.S. gambling and the UFC. Jay Rood, vice president of race and sports at MGM Resorts International, says that over his almost decade-long tenure overseeing the books for the 12 MGM casinos, he has also watched the growth of regular MMA bets, which are now running neck-and-neck with boxing.

“The MMA crowd is educated and has an opinion on and knows every fight,” Rood said. “But on three boxing dates, I get as much handle as I get on UFC through the entire year.”

Those big boxing fight nights, the so-called “Fights of Century,” are all about name recognition, like Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather. However, MMA is now countering with names like Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey, giving the pugs a run for the gambling money.

“UFC has done a fantastic job marketing their stars,” Rood said. “They’ve figured out they need to be on TV and make these fighters personalities. Let fans connect. Ten years from now, MMA could be 80 percent of my combat-sports action.”

That would be music to the ears of Lawrence Epstein, a top UFC executive who two years ago came out in support of expanded legalized gambling in the U.S. He says that properly regulated gambling adds legitimacy and credibility to the sport.

“At the end of the day,” Epstein said, “they wouldn’t be putting up lines if fans didn’t want it.”

So what of Luca Fury? If this trend continues, and these casual bettors flood the market and oddsmakers are forced to set more accurate lines, will he and his fellow fulltime MMA gamblers start hedging their bets?

“We won’t have as great an edge,” he said.

But, Fury says, the Cooleys and Roods of the world were already getting better, and even now, there are fewer ridiculous favorites to pounce on. In fact, Fury says, an influx of casual money might actually help by watering down the betting pool.

“Bigger fights with the most known fighters will actually have better odds because of more action,” Fury said. “Casual money can really move the lines. There will still always be spots.”

One of those spots would be a fight like Ferguson-Harris, which was difficult to handicap because of a dearth of up-to-date information on either of the former bare-knucklers. Rood’s MGM properties didn’t even book the fight.

But BookMaker did, and Cooley says that their total handle on that fight was in the five figures – and around 70 percent of the action was on the underdog, Harris.

“Slice winning via TKO was a decent victory for our shop,” Cooley said.

Tony Rehagen is a freelance writer based in St. Louis. His work has appeared in Men’s Health, GQ, espnW and others. Follow him on Twitter @trehagen.