Super Bowl XLVI money-line moves
Chad Millman
ESPN INSIDER
Ahh, the Super Bowl. It means morning shows spending days in a plaza away from home and presidents using the national holiday to give big sit-down interviews.
Now, lest we forget how big, huge and important this game is to the gambling world, consider this stat: According to a survey done by the company Poll Position, at least 25 million Americans will gamble on the Super Bowl.
(Truth be told, I have never heard of Poll Position and don't know anything about its methods, except that it claims to have surveyed more than 1,100 people to come up with that number. But I am going to use the results because they serve my purpose. Welcome to high-level argument manipulation, ladies and gents.)
It's easy to see how that number of bettors spirals out of control, especially when nuns in St. Louis are playing Super Bowl boxes. A truer indication of how impactful this game can be is in the expectations of Vegas. It's been four years since the total handle on the game bet at Nevada sports books topped $90 million. And that was back in 2008, the last time these two teams played.
<offer>Then the total numbers reached just north of $92 million. (That made it third-highest in the past 10 years, after the $93 million bet on the Indianapolis Colts-Chicago Bears the season before and the $94 million bet on the Seattle Seahawks-Pittsburgh Steelers the year before that. Clearly, the mid-'90s were the salad days. Because, although the Steelers were in the game, no one can say that the Seattle-Pittsburgh matchup was more publicly enticing than Steelers-Green Bay Packers last season.)
The good news is, many bookmakers anticipate topping that $90 million mark again this year. The troubling news, at least for them, is that they are potentially looking at another unbalanced book. There has been so much talk about how this Giants team is similar to the one that beat the Pats four years ago. To be honest, I think of most of it as bunk as it relates to the game. But the similarity from a gambling perspective is strange, and useful. Because, although Super Bowl XLII was a boon for handle, it also was the biggest loss the books suffered in the past decade. So much money came in on the underdog Giants that, when they beat the Pats, it cost bookmakers $2.6 million in payouts.
This year, the same thing has happened. The Patriots opened as favorites and, as soon as the number was posted, bets started pouring in on the Giants. The game began as Pats minus-3.5. I think it was 12 minutes, no joke, before it was Pats minus-3. And for the past two weeks it's been sitting there, for the most part, with books choosing to move the cost of the bet (from New York plus-3, minus-110 to plus-3, minus-120 to plus-3, minus-125), rather than move off the three. This week on my podcast Jay Kornegay, a bookmaker at the Las Vegas Hotel, told me, "I am hoping to wait until the weekend before going to that 2.5."
As of Wednesday, before the public crush he was expecting, Kornegay had more tickets bet on the Giants. But he had bigger dollar bets from the wiseguys on the Patriots. And that is his dilemma. Come Friday, Saturday and Sunday the squares are going to invade his book and start betting the Giants, just as all the guys who exist in the netherworld between sharp and square have been doing online. (That includes most of you who read this column. You bet often enough and do enough research that you are no longer a square, but you don't bet for a living, so you are not a sharp. That's what the Internet has done: created a generation of nearly good-enoughs or think-you-are-good-enoughs.) But, if Kornegay moves to minus-2.5, "I know the wiseguys are going to pounce on it," he said.
So he needs to wait until he is oversubscribed enough on the Giants that it makes sense to give people an opportunity to bet the Patriots. Because while fans would love a repeat of the last time although two teams met, bookmakers would prefer something a little more profitable.
Anyway, for the wiseguy perspective on this game, here's Bryan Leonard of footballwinners.com breaking down the line.
New York Giants vs. New England Patriots
Line moves: Patriots opened at minus-3.5, currently at minus-3, trending toward minus-2.5
Leonard says: "It is human to see the value and want to grab it and worry about it later, and I think that is what a lot of people did with that 3.5. As a key number, the three is much more valuable than four. If you were looking to play the Giants at all and you saw that half, you wanted to get it right away so guys just blindly bought it. Then it went down to three, and guys said, 'I have to get the number before it gets to 2.5,' so they took the three, too. Now is where we find out who they like and if they like the position they are in.
"Should they hedge? The Super Bowl is great for that, because the public will come in and play the dog on the money line, so you can get a cheap money line on the favorite. From an actual game perspective, it has a lot to do with the Rob Gronkowski injury. If it looks like he will play, you will get significant buyback. If not, guys will stick with the good numbers they have. I made the line four if he was healthy, so I obviously think New England is value if laying anything less than three. I will play them on the money line."
</offer>
Chad Millman
ESPN INSIDER
Ahh, the Super Bowl. It means morning shows spending days in a plaza away from home and presidents using the national holiday to give big sit-down interviews.
Now, lest we forget how big, huge and important this game is to the gambling world, consider this stat: According to a survey done by the company Poll Position, at least 25 million Americans will gamble on the Super Bowl.
(Truth be told, I have never heard of Poll Position and don't know anything about its methods, except that it claims to have surveyed more than 1,100 people to come up with that number. But I am going to use the results because they serve my purpose. Welcome to high-level argument manipulation, ladies and gents.)
It's easy to see how that number of bettors spirals out of control, especially when nuns in St. Louis are playing Super Bowl boxes. A truer indication of how impactful this game can be is in the expectations of Vegas. It's been four years since the total handle on the game bet at Nevada sports books topped $90 million. And that was back in 2008, the last time these two teams played.
<offer>Then the total numbers reached just north of $92 million. (That made it third-highest in the past 10 years, after the $93 million bet on the Indianapolis Colts-Chicago Bears the season before and the $94 million bet on the Seattle Seahawks-Pittsburgh Steelers the year before that. Clearly, the mid-'90s were the salad days. Because, although the Steelers were in the game, no one can say that the Seattle-Pittsburgh matchup was more publicly enticing than Steelers-Green Bay Packers last season.)
The good news is, many bookmakers anticipate topping that $90 million mark again this year. The troubling news, at least for them, is that they are potentially looking at another unbalanced book. There has been so much talk about how this Giants team is similar to the one that beat the Pats four years ago. To be honest, I think of most of it as bunk as it relates to the game. But the similarity from a gambling perspective is strange, and useful. Because, although Super Bowl XLII was a boon for handle, it also was the biggest loss the books suffered in the past decade. So much money came in on the underdog Giants that, when they beat the Pats, it cost bookmakers $2.6 million in payouts.
This year, the same thing has happened. The Patriots opened as favorites and, as soon as the number was posted, bets started pouring in on the Giants. The game began as Pats minus-3.5. I think it was 12 minutes, no joke, before it was Pats minus-3. And for the past two weeks it's been sitting there, for the most part, with books choosing to move the cost of the bet (from New York plus-3, minus-110 to plus-3, minus-120 to plus-3, minus-125), rather than move off the three. This week on my podcast Jay Kornegay, a bookmaker at the Las Vegas Hotel, told me, "I am hoping to wait until the weekend before going to that 2.5."
As of Wednesday, before the public crush he was expecting, Kornegay had more tickets bet on the Giants. But he had bigger dollar bets from the wiseguys on the Patriots. And that is his dilemma. Come Friday, Saturday and Sunday the squares are going to invade his book and start betting the Giants, just as all the guys who exist in the netherworld between sharp and square have been doing online. (That includes most of you who read this column. You bet often enough and do enough research that you are no longer a square, but you don't bet for a living, so you are not a sharp. That's what the Internet has done: created a generation of nearly good-enoughs or think-you-are-good-enoughs.) But, if Kornegay moves to minus-2.5, "I know the wiseguys are going to pounce on it," he said.
So he needs to wait until he is oversubscribed enough on the Giants that it makes sense to give people an opportunity to bet the Patriots. Because while fans would love a repeat of the last time although two teams met, bookmakers would prefer something a little more profitable.
Anyway, for the wiseguy perspective on this game, here's Bryan Leonard of footballwinners.com breaking down the line.
New York Giants vs. New England Patriots
Line moves: Patriots opened at minus-3.5, currently at minus-3, trending toward minus-2.5
Leonard says: "It is human to see the value and want to grab it and worry about it later, and I think that is what a lot of people did with that 3.5. As a key number, the three is much more valuable than four. If you were looking to play the Giants at all and you saw that half, you wanted to get it right away so guys just blindly bought it. Then it went down to three, and guys said, 'I have to get the number before it gets to 2.5,' so they took the three, too. Now is where we find out who they like and if they like the position they are in.
"Should they hedge? The Super Bowl is great for that, because the public will come in and play the dog on the money line, so you can get a cheap money line on the favorite. From an actual game perspective, it has a lot to do with the Rob Gronkowski injury. If it looks like he will play, you will get significant buyback. If not, guys will stick with the good numbers they have. I made the line four if he was healthy, so I obviously think New England is value if laying anything less than three. I will play them on the money line."
</offer>
