- Super Bowl LVII will be played at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona on February 12, 2023.
- The AFC Champion Kansas City Chiefs and the NFL Champion Cincinnati Bengals opened at a near ‘pick’em’ price.
- Philadelphia is now a short favorite at most books in Nevada, Colorado and offshore.
The matchup for Super Bowl LVII is set as the Philadelphia Eagles will take on the Kansas City Chiefs at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona on February 12, 2023. Even before the matchup was set, the Super Bowl betting line had already become a major topic of conversation–at least among the mainstream sports media and the masses that get their information from them. The Don Best opening line for the Super Bowl had Kansas City as the slightest of favorites at PICK -115 with the total set at 50.5.
We’re approximately 24 hours out from the end of the AFC Championship game and now the Philadelphia Eagles are slight favorites. At virtually every ‘store’ on the board, Philadelphia is now a -1.5 or -2 favorite. The total is 49 or 49.5 depending on the book. For much of the Super Bowl era handicappers such as myself–or my predecessors in the business–would be monitoring and trying to interpret what it all meant. When Las Vegas could legitimately claim to be the ‘sports betting epicenter of the world’, bookmakers knew that the Super Bowl line would be the most important number they’d hang all year. At one point, the betting outcome of the Super Bowl could mean the difference between finishing the year ‘in the black’ or ‘in the red’.
That’s no longer the case. Due to a confluence of factors, Nevada makes money on the Super Bowl just about every year. Nevada gaming regulators upgraded their statistical reporting in 1991 and that’s considered the start of legitimate data on the state’s Super Bowl handle. The first game under the new reporting system was Super Bowl XXV between the New York Giants and Buffalo Bills as the Giants won outright as +7 underdogs. Nevada sportsbooks turned a profit that year and pretty much every year since. They had a fractional % loss on Super Bowl 29 (1994) when the San Francisco 49ers won and covered as -18.5 point favorites over the San Diego Chargers. That’s the biggest ‘chalk’ price in Super Bowl history and one that will likely never be broken due to the salary cap, free agency and general parity in pro football. The other losing year for Nevada bookmakers came in Super Bowl XLII in 2004. That was the year that the New York Giants shocked the New England Patriots by winning outright as +12.5 point underdogs.
Nevada’s gaming regulators didn’t do it intentionally, but their more informative data release that began in 1991 also coincides with the start on the offshore sports betting boom. There were more places to bet offshore as well as earlier line posting. For awhile, however, the line movement dynamic of the Super Bowl remained similar to the way it was when Nevada had the market cornered. A bigger factor in the growing irrelevance of early Super Bowl lines and the analysis thereof has to do with changes in how the games are bet. This started with the proliferation of proposition bets that (offshore at least) shows no sign of slowing down. The widespread availability of live (in-running) betting and more recent innovations such as microbetting have not only ‘changed the game’ for bettors but sportsbooks as well. Today, the majority of betting action in Nevada comes *after* kickoff.
At some point during the two week buildup to the Super Bowl we’ll talk about the dynamic of lines on the ‘big game’ back when Nevada was the focal point of the sports betting world.
