Survivor Sweat marketplace offers Circa contestants life after elimination

Not even halfway through the NFL season, the wildly popular Circa Survivor contest is already down to only 660 entries after starting with a record field of 25,017 who paid $1,000 each to compete for a $25 million prize.

But there is life after elimination for those wanting to buy back into the contest, or purchase a piece of the action for the first time, at Survivor Sweat, the official marketplace of Circa Sports where surviving contestants can monetize their entries.

Survivor Sweat is an online marketplace where participants in Circa football contests, including the Million and Grandissimo, can list all or a portion of their entries for sale, and where buyers can purchase them.

The Las Vegas-based company, in its fourth season, had its biggest sales week yet in NFL Week 7, which ended Monday.

“It’s been a record-breaking season for us,” said James Sullivan, co-founder of Survivor Sweat with fellow sports agent Brian Balsbaugh. “The marketplace has almost doubled in size every year. There’s been millions of dollars of transactions that have been done through the marketplace.”

There have already been more than 500 sales this season alone on the Survivor Sweat (survivorsweat.com) marketplace, including one Thursday for $44,400 for 100 percent of an entry and another for $18,900 for 50 percent of an entry.

The implied value of each remaining Survivor entry entering NFL Week 8 is $37,905.

In the $1,000-entry Survivor contest, contestants pick one outright NFL winner each week but can use each team only once in the 18-week NFL regular season (plus two additional holiday weeks). A loss or tie eliminates the entry. The Grandissimo is a $100,000-entry high-stakes Survivor contest with the same rules.

In the $1,000-entry Million, contestants make five weekly picks against the spread.

There were more than 150 listings Thursday ranging from $600 for one percent of a Survivor entry to $175,000 for 75 percent of an entry, though there was 100 percent of an entry on sale for $55,000. Each entry lists the asking price, proxy used, available teams and whether or not pick control is included.

“The seller will set the price based on the implied value and then also based on what teams they’ve used,” Sullivan said. “The buyers are some people that want back in the contest, but in some cases it’s people that are still in the contest, and they’ll use the marketplace as a hedge on their active entry.

“We’ve seen lots of instances where active players in the contest are purchasing shares and even pick control status of other entries.”

Survivor Sweat makes money through a 10 percent transaction fee that’s paid by the seller and covers the cost of brokering the transaction and the legal contract involved with it.

“Both parties have 24 hours to review and sign the contract. Once the contract is signed, then we transfer those shares to the buyer,” Sullivan said. “If it’s pick control, we transfer the pick control status to the buyer and then they make the picks moving forward.”

Circa partnership

Circa Sports named Survivor Sweat the exclusive marketplace for its contest entries in late September. The marketplace now includes Circa’s official recognition of every transaction completed on the platform.

“The more our contests have grown over the years, the more folks have wanted to buy and sell pieces of entries,” Circa vice president of operations Mike Palm said. “We wanted to be able to provide an official market that would recognize change of ownership of an entry. Survivor Sweat had the most developed marketplace and excellent tech. It made sense to partner with them.”

Sullivan said the partnership with Circa has already paid dividends.

“On top of the additional eyeballs and promotion from Circa being involved in it, it just provides the additional comfort and clarity for the buyers to know that they are going to get paid at the end directly from Circa,” he said.

Survivor Sweat, which also offers a contest proxy service, has brokered a handful of six-figure transactions, including one for a factory worker in New Mexico during the 2024 season.

“He finished working the graveyard shift. It was Thursday morning and he was going to take the Pittsburgh Steelers on ‘Thursday Night Football,’ but he decided to sell his entry,” Sullivan said. “He sold his entry that morning for six figures. Thursday Night Football. Pittsburgh Steelers lost. He was hours away from his entry being worth zero dollars and he fortunately sold the entry, made six figures, and exited the contest.”

On the flip side, Sullivan said another contestant that had lost all of his entries in the 2024 Survivor contest by Week 3 purchased 55 percent and pick control of an entry for five figures. He then went on to finish as one of eight undefeated winning entries that took home $1.8 million each.

“The original owner still owned a big chunk of it, so everyone was super happy and excited when they won,” he said.

Poker parallels

Sullivan and Balsbaugh represent some of the world’s top poker players, including Daniel Negreanu. The business partners came up with the idea to start the Survivor Sweat marketplace after seeing the contest explode in popularity in much the same way the poker world did when Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event.

“We saw the same parallels with the Circa Survivor contest,” Sullivan said. “There’s staking in poker. There’s buying shares of people in poker … and so we were like, ‘What if we did that in Survivor?’ And that was really the beginning of Survivor Sweat.

“The players loved it from day one.”

Survivor contestants quickly embraced the chance to monetize their entries. Before the marketplace — which opens at 8 a.m. Monday and closes before kickoff Sunday — the only ways to lock in a profit were either to win the contest or place massive hedge bets at the casino.

“The problem with hedge bets is you either need to get credit from the casino or you need a lot of liquid cash to go place the bet at the casino,” Sullivan said. “And you have to be here to place the bet.”

Another issue with hedging is that it can become very expensive if a player loses the bet in Week 15, for example, and then has to double the wager in each of the following weeks.

“The great thing about the marketplace is rather than having to come up with the money to place these hedge bets, you’re actually getting paid on selling shares of your entry,” Sullivan said. “From a buyer’s standpoint, it gives them a chance to get back in the contest and have a little sweat.”

Contact reporter Todd Dewey at [email protected]. Follow @tdewey33 on X.