- Joined ESPN in 2014
- Journalist covering gambling industry since 2008
The countdown to Super Bowl LVII between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs has begun, and the betting at sportsbooks on a game that’s expected to have billions of dollars riding on it is heating up.
We’ll follow it all right here, the biggest bets, the wackiest wagers and the prolific prop bets.
Good luck!
Consensus Super Bowl LVII line:
Eagles (-1.5)
Total: 50
Saturday update: First big-money bets comes in
• The first of what is expected to be several seven-figure bets on the Super Bowl was reported Saturday morning by BetMGM: $1 million on the Eagles on the money line at -125 odds. A BetMGM spokesperson declined to provide any additional details about the bet, including where it was placed.
• “As of this morning, the Chiefs and the over is our best result,” Craig Mucklow, vice president of trading for Caesars Sportsbook, said Saturday. “But there’s no way that’s going to hold.”
• On Saturday, the amount of money bet on the winner of the Super Bowl (money line) was 50/50 at DraftKings, while 72% of the money bet on the game’s point spread was on the Eagles -1.5.
• A bettor with PointsBet placed a pair of $100 bets on the backup quarterbacks for each team winning the Super Bowl MVP. The bettor put $100 on the Eagles’ Gardner Minshew at 250-1 and $136 on the Chiefs’ Chad Henne at 100-1.
• At DraftKings, the two starting QBs, the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes and the Eagles’ Jalen Hurts, were attracting the most action to win MVP. The player getting the third-most action? Eagles outside linebacker Haason Reddick, who, at 35-1, has attracted more bets than Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce (11-1).
Prop bets hit the board at sportsbooks
Here are some notes from the early action at Caesars Sportsbooks, courtesy of Caesars editorial writer Max Meyer:
• In early coin-flip betting, tails has garnered the majority of the action, including a $5,025 bet on tails placed by a Michigan bettors at -101 odds. Nearly 77% of the money that’s been bet on the Super Bowl coin flip as of Thursday was on tails.
• An Arizona bettor placed a $50,000 bet on Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes to be named MVP of the Super Bowl. The bet was placed earlier in the playoffs when Mahomes was listed at +350 and could win a net $175,000. Mahomes’ odds have improved to +130, behind only Eagles QB Jalen Hurts at +125.
• A bettor in Ontario placed a pair of $500 bets on team’s kicker — Philadelphia’s Jake Elliott (200-1) and Kansas City’s Harrison Butker (200-1) — to be named Super Bowl MVP. A kicker has never won the award.
• Caesars Sportsbook offered a yes/no prop on whether a quarterback will have a reception in the game. More money has been bet on the QB reception prop than any other prop offered by Caesars, the bulk of it on the “No.”
The “Yes” opened at +475, and the “No” at -650.Money poured in on the “No,” including a $13,000 bet by a bettor in New York at -650 for a potential win of $2,000. The “No” had attracted seven bets of at least $1,000, causing the price to grow to -1,200.
Line movement
The opening point spread and total varied somewhat wildly when it was posted by sportsbooks shortly after the Chiefs used a last-second field goal to nip the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC Championship Game. Caesars Sportsbook and the SuperBook were among the operators that opened the line at pick ’em. Other books, including DraftKings and FanDuel, opened the Eagles as small favorites, while still other shops, like PointsBet and Circa, installed the Chiefs as 2.5-point favorites.
Within hours, the Eagles emerged as the consensus favorites, and the line grew to as high as Philadelphia -2.5. It ticked back down to Eagles -1.5 the following days.
The over/under total, which opened at a consensus 49.5, had ticked up to 50 as the calendar turned to midnight.
By the Numbers
$3.02 billion: The amount wagered on the Super Bowl with Nevada sportsbooks since the state’s gaming control began tracking betting on the NFL championship in 1991. A record $179.8 million was bet on last year’s Super Bowl with Nevada sportsbooks.
$233.2 million: The net win on the Super Bowl for Nevada sportsbooks since 1991.
2: The number of Super Bowls that Nevada sportsbooks have suffered a net loss. The books lost a record $2.6 million when the underdog New York Giants beat the New England Patriots 17-14 in Super Bowl XII. The bookies also got dinged for approximately $397,000 in 1995 when the heavily favored San Francisco 49ers won and covered in a 49-26 win over the San Diego Chargers in 1995.
20: The number of outright upsets by betting underdogs in the Super Bowl.
27-27-2: The betting favorite’s record against the spread in the Super Bowl.
26-28-1: The number of Super Bowl overs and unders with one push. (There was not archived betting total for Super Bowl I).
15: The number of consecutive playoff games that the Chiefs have been the betting favorite, the longest such streak in the Super Bowl era.
8: The number of seven-figure bets on last year’s Super Bowl that were reported by sportsbooks.
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