2017 Super Bowl Bets and Super Bowl LI Betting
Every year, roughly $10,000,000,000 is bet on the Super Bowl worldwide. The world-famous NFL championship game is the single biggest betting event every single year, with an estimated 200 hundred million people making wagers on the outcome of the game.
Las Vegas takes a lot of those bets, but much of the wagering takes place in office pools and at Super Bowl parties throughout the country. Even if you aren't a sports gambler, anyone watching the Super Bowl is likely to end up placing a side bet or entering some kind of betting pool at their Super Bowl watching party. This is a way to get people involved and interested who don't watch much NFL football and may not care too much who wins.
Super Bowl Betting Basics
That's who several of the articles on this website are meant to teach. I assume the reader here knows nothing about the National Football League and especially placing wagers on the outcome of sporting events. I'll discuss the terminology of American football betting and super bowl bets, providing a basic glossary of gambling terms and football definitions so you'll understand what's being talked about. I'll also provide background on famous Super Bowl wagers of the past, along with an analysis of historical trends. In certain articles, I'll also provide an explanation of the certain types of common sports bets and party proposition bets, so you know what the options are before you pull out your wallet.
Super Bowl 2017 Odds and Lines
Many people who first look at the odds on a game and assume the team with the minus sign is the underdog. Either that, or they look at the lines and give up even trying to figure out what the handicapping notations mean. Even worse is the moneyline betting which tries to simplify things by getting rid of the betting line. I've noticed the moneyline sometimes confuses experienced sports gamblers who're more used to reading the Las Vegas pointspread out of the local newspaper. I'll devote an entire page to each of these concepts and explain in easy-to-understand terms exactly how each of these works and what you should be searching for. When I'm finished and the Superbowl betting is explained, you'll have a good idea of which bet you want to test your luck upon.
Super Bowl Futures - All-Year NFL Betting
You'll also learn that 2015 Super Bowl betting isn't just something you do over Super Bowl weekend. Las Vegas sportsbooks set lines on Super Bowl futures months before the NFL regular season even starts. Before the National Football League teams even enter training camp and start their preseason schedule, Vegas casinos are taking wagers on Super Bowl futures, which are bets on probable Super Bowl winners for the next season. As you read this, Super Bowl XLVII bets are being placed on who becomes the NFL champion for the 2012-2015 season. All the favorites from last year enter the new year's betting as favorites and the champion is often the odds-on favorite, but anyone who watches the NFL knows there aren't that many repeats for last year's Super Bowl winner. I'll discuss value betting and how to pick both favorites and longshots when making NFL futures bets.
Super Bowl Pointspread - Super Bowl Over & Under
When you get to Super Bowl week, most of the betting involves the two most common football wagers: on the point spread and on the over/under. The point spread is the basic football bet. One team is the favorite and the other is the underdog. Bookmakers decide how many points the underdog should be given to get an equal number of bets on either side of the equation, which is called "setting a line". If a sportsbook believes that half the people will bet on the Patriots and half on the Giants if the New England Patriots are installed as 7-point favorite, then the Patriots are listed at -7 and the New York Giants are listed at +7. In other words, the Patriots would have to win by seven for a push, so they would have to win by 8 or more to win the bet. At the same time, the New York Giants could either win outright or lose by 6 or less points to win the wager. If the Pats beat the Giants by 7, the bet would be a push.
What you should remember is the betting line isn't meant to be Las Vegas's prediction of who they think is going to win and by how much, but how they think the public is going to bet the game. An oddsmaker wants to make sure roughly one half bets one way and the other half the other way, because that assures the sports book wins off of the juice--that is, the fee a person pays in order to make the wager. That's why you'll see the line move throughout Super Bowl week, as gamblers bet more on one side of the spread or another. I'll discuss this in greater detail in the "Super Bowl Odds & Lines" article.
The Over & Under bet is about how many total points are going to be scored in a game. This takes out whether a team wins or not and replaces it with the prediction of how high scoring the game is going to be. If a game has an Over/Under of 44, it's doesn't matter if the game is 24-21 or 45-0 to the person who bets the over, so long as the combined points are 45 or more. The same thing goes for the gambler who chooses the under bet. If the total points equal 43 or under, that person wins the bet. Many betters prefer this bet, because it often keeps the game interesting from a money perspective without requiring them to bet against their favorite team or because they think it's easier to predict. The professional bookmakers are pretty darn good at setting the Over/Under bet, too.
2015 Super Bowl Prop Bets
Super Bowl proposition bets become more speculative, but often pay off at a higher rate. Examples of prop bets would be who scores the first touchdown, who wins the Super Bowl MVP Award, which teams kicks the most field goals, or even whether the coin toss is heads or tails. Name any moment in the Super Bowl presentation, from the halftime show to the Super Bowl commercials, and you're likely to see a prop bet involving that event. These prop bets tend to be posted at online sportsbooks and in Las Vegas once the two Super Bowl teams are determined, after the AFC and NFC Championship Games. That means they are late-breaking bets you can make in the two weeks before the Super Bowl. But even if you forget to make these wagers, that doesn't mean it's too late to getting involved in gambling. It's never too late to bet on Super Bowl.
Super Bowl Party Bets
Those who waited too late to get in on the Super Bowl season bets, betting line, or prop bets shouldn't worry. That's because most Super Bowl watching parties I've ever been to had side bets, betting pools, and other proposition wagers on the table to keep things interesting.
Betting on Superbowl 2015
That's the briefest of overviews. If after reading this basic guide to Super Bowl bets and betting you have any questions, stay around and read the expanded content to get your full answers. I want to cover each type of Super Bowl wager in full detail in its own article, so this site eventually will be a comprehensive guide to Super Bowl wagers.
