LAS VEGAS >> On Super Bowl Sunday, as thousands of sports fans pour into sportsbooks all over Las Vegas, wagering tens of millions on the Patriots and Falcons, a majority of their bets won’t hinge on the game’s final result at all.
Indeed, at the Westgate SuperBook, a 25,000-square foot mecca of sports betting just off the Vegas strip, the game feels almost secondary. A mesmerizingly large LED screen cycles through 400 other ways you can bet on the Super Bowl. Many have nothing to do with the final score. Here, and in most Vegas sportsbooks, you can bet on nearly every minute detail of the big game — from the opening coin toss to whether Julian Edelman will catch more passes than Russell Westbrook hits free throws against the Blazers.
Proposition bets — or “props” — range from the rational to the ridiculous. If you’re particularly down on Matt Ryan, for instance, Westgate offers 500-to-1 odds that the Falcons quarterback will finish the Super Bowl without a single completion. Or if — for some odd reason — you believe Tom Brady and the Patriots will only put a single safety on the scoreboard, then a winning $1 bet could yield you just shy of $10,000.
When they first debuted in the 1980s, props were considered sucker’s bets, using especially long odds as a ploy to conjure up business. That changed, most say, with an unlikely rushing touchdown from William “Refrigerator” Perry in the 1986 Super Bowl. Oddsmakers were stunned. Sportsbooks, on a lark, had taken a massive hit. But the huge loss from Perry’s touchdown also attracted a significant amount of media attention. Before long, the public was demanding more.
In the 30 years since, props have transformed the Super Bowl betting scene, and as sportsbooks continue to ante up, the way millions watch the Super Bowl, from coin toss to final Gatorade shower, is changing. Nearly every play of Sunday’s game will carry stakes. Bettors will count punt yardage. They’ll cheer — or boo — the coin toss. Those placing wagers online or at offshore sites may even take special interest in Lady Gaga’s halftime hair color.
At Westgate, which bills itself as “The World Leader in Proposition Wagering,” the master list of props is printed out in thick, 30-page packets. Jay Kornegay, the Vice President of Race and Sports Operations, expects prop bets will account for at least 60 percent of Westgate’s total “handle” on Sunday. “It’s a huge part of the Super Bowl experience now,” he says.
But how huge? Last year, according to the Nevada Gaming Commission, a record $132.5 million in total bets were placed on the Super Bowl. That figure, only makes for a fraction (3 percent) of the total money bet on the game, though, given how much is gambled illegally.
This year, the American Gaming Association estimates a staggering $4.7 billion will be wagered on the Super Bowl, the vast majority of which will flow unregulated from offshore sportsbooks and bookmakers. Considering the growing popularity of props, a conservative estimate would suggest at least $1.5 billion — and possibly more — will be risked on them alone.
On the sports betting world’s most lucrative day, props are becoming increasingly lucrative business. For every one bet on the game’s result, multiple bookmakers said average bettors often put down 4-6 prop bets.
But when it comes to setting those odds, Super Bowl props are “more gut and instinctual than anything,” according to Nick Bogdanovich, the director of trading at William Hill US. Math is still involved, but with less concrete data, there’s more pressure for bookmakers, who know experienced bettors will cash in on mistakes.
“My 7-year-old can make a normal betting line,” Bogdanovich explains. “But trying to come up with Tom Brady’s passing yards or if there will be more points in the second half than the first, that’s totally different.”
For Bookmaker.eu, an offshore betting site based in Costa Rica, that margin for error became all too clear last week. The site set even money odds on whether the team calling the Super Bowl coin toss would choose heads or tails. The logic was sound. “It’s a common prop,” says Scott Cooley, a Bookmaker.eu spokesman.
The problem? The Patriots, who will call the toss, always go heads.
Bettors who knew their coin toss tendencies pounced. Action shifted heavily to heads — so heavily, in fact, that Bookmaker.eu had to stop taking wagers for several days. Last Sunday, when the prop was posted again, heads was a 6-1 favorite.
“We’ll fess up and admit we didn’t do our due diligence there,” Cooley said.
On Jan. 23, the day after the AFC and NFC title games, bookmakers across Las Vegas hunkered down in conference rooms, outfitted with an array of flatscreens, to put together their prop offerings. With so many offered — and mistakes on any of them costly — the process takes three hectic days.
On Jan. 26, just before 7 p.m., a line of experienced bettors was waiting at Westgate for their release. Each was limited to two wagers, before going to the back of the line for two more.
“It’s a race now between all of the books and the industry worldwide,” Cooley says. “Who can get the props up the fastest?
With the highest predicted total in Super Bowl history, the likelihood of a close, high-scoring game colored most bookmakers’ decisions this year. They knew “average joes” would outnumber experienced “sharps”, as they do every year for the Super Bowl, and inexperienced bettors would overwhelmingly bet the over on offensive props, which “inflated” those odds.
Vegas, in other words, will be rooting for a boring, low-scoring affair on Sunday.
“We know how they’re going to play it, what the sharps are going to do, what the average joes are going to do,” Kornegay says. “It just depends on where we want to open it, at that time. We know where the first bets are going to come in. But how much do we want to move it when they do? That’s the artform.”
When Kornegay first got into bookmaking, he remembers offering 10 to 20 props. The 1995 Super Bowl between the 49ers and Chargers, he says, was when the market exploded. With a 19.5-point spread, the sportsbook upped the wager menu to nearly 150 options, many of which were decided late to keep casual bettors interested.
Coupled with the rise of fantasy sports, “props took off,” Kornegay says. “We haven’t looked back since.”
Still, Vegas has taken its lumps, at times. In 2014, when the game’s opening snap went over Peyton Manning’s head and the Seahawks scored a safety, Westgate paid out 60-to-1. After one play, Westgate’s losses were in the six figures. It was “our worst result on a prop ever,” Kornegay says.
But more often than not, sportsbooks have cashed in on the public’s obsession. If it weren’t for time constraints, Kornegay says, Westgate would gladly offer “a couple hundred more.” He doesn’t believe there’s such a thing as too many props.
“The possibilities are endless,” he says.
At Bookmaker.eu, that’s especially true. Away from the regulatory standards of Vegas casinos, offshore and online sportsbooks offer odds on how long Luke Bryan’s national anthem will be, how many commercials Peyton Manning will appear in, and how many times broadcasters will say “Deflategate”.
One of Bookmaker’s biggest movers this week was a prop on which song Lady Gaga will sing to open her halftime performance. “Bad Romance” opened as an odds-on favorite, but has since been surpassed by “Edge of Glory”, which opened as a heavy, 9-to-1 underdog.
Such odds aren’t exactly in a bookmaker’s wheelhouse. But with the Super Bowl approaching and prop bets still on the rise, they’ll gladly offer them, anyway.
“Honestly, I’ve never even heard one of these songs in my life,” Cooley says. “I had to look up what she even looked like.”
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