PressBox recently chatted with longtime gaming reporter Bill Ordine about the history of Super Bowl prop bets, covering the game from Las Vegas and more.
PressBox: When did Super Bowl prop bets become mainstream?
Bill Ordine: The prop bets actually became a thing at a casino called the Imperial Palace. The guy who really popularized it was this guy Jay Kornegay, who is now with the SuperBook at the Westgate [in Las Vegas]. The reason that they came into play was to keep bettors riveted in the sportsbook or in the casino as the game was playing out, especially in the era when Super Bowls tended to be blowouts. The point of the prop bets was to keep people from getting bored and leaving because the bet that you made at the beginning of the game seemed to be pretty well decided and the games themselves were not particularly compelling.
The whole idea of in-game prop bets — whether or not a running back would gain 80 yards throughout the course of the game, those kinds of bets were really meant to be an enticement to keep customers engaged with the game. … I covered a couple Super Bowls in Vegas. What I do recall is that folks with their prop bet sheets at these banquet tables drinking an adult beverage and eating hot dogs. They have all of their player prop bets in front of them. It was almost like they were playing bingo or something as they were keeping track of their player prop bets. That seemed to be the late ‘80s, early ‘90s.
PB: Do you have any stories about covering the Super Bowl from Las Vegas?
BO: It was the Super Bowl where the Steelers played the Seahawks [in February 2006]. I’m out there for that. Everywhere in America on Sunday, the Super Bowl was going to be played except in Las Vegas because they were going to be watching “The Big Game.” Casinos had been mainly forbidden by the NFL to even use the phrase “Super Bowl.” The NFL was just irate with Las Vegas generally and Las Vegas casinos in particular, mainly over an advertising campaign that had happened two years earlier where Las Vegas did a TV ad when the Super Bowl was being held in Houston.
The Las Vegas tourism folks put out an ad [asking], “Where would you rather watch the Super Bowl, in Houston or Las Vegas?” The NFL had been upset with Las Vegas for a number of years because the casinos were opening up banquet rooms and charging people to come watch the game in these banquet rooms where there would be inexpensive beverages and inexpensive stadium food. They even had temporary betting windows. The NFL said, “Wait a minute, you guys are getting that game for free. That is something that we give away for free. You guys are now turning around and monetizing that and we don’t like it.”
The NFL started sending out cease-and-desist letters to the Las Vegas casinos generally saying, “We don’t want you to be charging money for people to go watch a game that we’re broadcasting for free. And if you keep it up, we want to let you know something: We know you do it all season long, and we might try to stop you from showing any NFL games in the casino.” There was a lot of saber-rattling going on. The result of that was up and down the Las Vegas strip people were invited to such and such casino to watch “The Big Game,” not the Super Bowl. The hostility between the NFL and Las Vegas generally was palpable and it was real.
… The handshake, the embrace between gambling interests and the NFL is just unmistakable now. There was a time when the NFL would want to pretend that people never watched the game because they had a betting interest on it. People only watched the game for the love of the sport, according to the NFL. To suggest otherwise was heresy. Of course everybody knew that was baloney, but that is a big difference between, say, 20 years ago and right now. That is a huge difference as it pertains to gambling on football and the league itself.
PB: Are you surprised by how popular Super Bowl prop bets have become?
BO: I think that once we pierced the barrier of being able to wager on the game incrementally, it was really inevitable. The people who used to say to me that sports betting made up 1 or 2 percent of total revenues for casinos in Las Vegas, wait a minute. That’s when you have to be in Vegas and walk up to a counter and make your bet. When you can do this from your couch, the handle is just going to explode. As a result, the most popular game of the year is going to be leveraged exponentially. Frankly, for me, it was entirely expected.
PB: What’s an easy way for a beginning bettor to enjoy the Super Bowl?
BO: I will tell you one that I did not make last year and kicked myself for months. I don’t know if every game sizes up this way, but one of the bets that you can make in a Super Bowl is MVP. Last year, we had two very good teams. San Francisco was playing Kansas City. It occurred to me that these are the two bets you make, not as a parlay but as individual bets. On the one hand, San Francisco to win the game outright — they were the underdogs, so you were getting plus odds on that.
On the other side, betting Patrick Mahomes to be the MVP because if Kansas City wins that game, who else other than Mahomes is going to be the MVP? If the 49ers win, it could be Brock Purdy, Christian McCaffrey or George Kittle. On the Kansas City side, your risk is that Travis Kelce could wind up winning MVP. The huge likelihood last year was that Mahomes would win MVP, which he did.
… I would look at picking the underdog and then picking the [most obvious] MVP from the favorite. In both cases, you should be getting plus odds. Certainly you’re not going to be making a killing on that because you’re going to have one winning wager and one losing wager, but if the plus number is big enough, that should be a winning combination.
PB: What other Super Bowl prop bets do you like?
BO: I don’t know that there are going to be very many guys this year that you can bet as an anytime scorer and be really confident about it other than should Philadelphia be in the Super Bowl, what do you think the odds are that the quarterback scores a touchdown just simply because of their tactic in short-yardage situations? That would be something to look at if in fact the Eagles are in the Super Bowl. What the odds would be on Jalen Hurts, I have no idea. As far as long-shot prop bets, to me a striking number of Super Bowls seem to feature safeties. It’s certainty a 50-1 shot, but if we’re talking about a $10 bet, that’s what I frequently call a lottery ticket. It seems it happens a lot more than you would expect, especially in a big game like that.
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