Big Blue View
Wagers to consider as you fill out your tickets
Welcome to the betting angle, Super Bowl edition! Each week during the season, I gave out my three favorite wagers for that week’s New York Giants game. Well, the Giants didn’t quite make it to the big game this season, so we can’t wager on them. But have no fear! The Super Bowl offers a Vegas-sized buffet of wagering options, from very plain vanilla bets on the point spread, money line, or game total, to the totally ludicrous, like which color Gatorade will be spilled on the winning coach. There’s something for everyone.
The Super Bowl garners action like no other event. It doesn’t matter which teams are playing. As more and more states allow the online wagering companies to take bets from their citizens, the handle grows. According to the American Gaming Association, a record $1.25 billion was wagered on Super Bowl LVIII last year, and they’re estimating that number to be around $1.4 billion for Super Bowl LIX, if not more. As recently as 2020, the total handle was $300 million. What we are witnessing is explosive growth. Throw in all the box pools and bets between friends and who knows what the real total is.
There are pages and pages of wagers offered on the major gambling sites for Sunday’s big game, which will be held in New Orleans for the 11th time. Usually, I give out three “best bets” per week, but where’s the fun in that when hundreds of them are on offer? I’ll use FanDuel as my basis for this article, and I won’t recommend anything with shorter odds than -135. To quote me, where’s the fun in that? I’m not going to touch the silly wagers (things like the coin flip, the length of the national anthem, how many times they show a certain pop star, bets about the halftime show and commercials, who the MVP mentions first in his post-game interview, etc.). I’m also not recommending any of the semi-silly ones like over-under on the uniform number of the first player to score a TD. If you like betting on that stuff, be my guest. I get it, it’s fun. I think you can get something like 11:1 on a parlay of Chiefs win + Travis Kelce proposing to Taylor Swift at the end of the game. For real. That’s a fade for me, but you do you.
As for the game itself, it’s a rematch from two years ago (KC 38, PHI 35), so we’ve got some recent history to go on. The line opened at KC -1.5, with a total of 48.5, and those numbers haven’t budged. I won’t go into too much analysis about the game itself, but I’ll say this: I think the Eagles have more talent on both sides of the ball and are deeper, but the line reflects the Mahomes (and Reid/Spagnuolo) factor, and the air of inevitability that this Kansas City team has. They’ve set an...
