How to bet on the Super Bowl
The Super Bowl is one game with more ways to bet it than any other on the calendar. The spread and the total are the tightest numbers of the year. Most of the rest of the menu is where the book makes its money.
The tightest number of the year
You can bet the big game like any other: the point spread, the moneyline and the total. What is different is the market behind the number.
There are usually two weeks between the conference title games and the Super Bowl, so the line is up for a long time, limits are at their highest, and professional money and public money both arrive in size. The result is a number that is very hard to beat and a fair bet at the standard cut of about 4.5 percent. If you have an opinion on the game, I'd bet the side or the total. That is where the price is fairest.
Betting the winner
On the day, a bet on the winner is a moneyline. At -150 you risk $150 to win $100, and the price says the team wins 60 percent of the time. At +130 you risk $100 to win $130.
Before and during the season it is a future, with one price for each team. Turn every team's price into a percentage and add them up, and the total runs well over 100; the excess is the book's cut, far bigger than on a single game, and your money is tied up for months besides. The page on futures has the detail.
Hundreds of props
Player props, game props, and novelty props such as the coin toss. What a book may offer depends on its regulator, so the menu is not the same everywhere.
The coin toss is the cleanest lesson on the board, because it is a true 50-50 and nobody has an edge on it. At -105 a side, the book's cut is 2.4 percent and a $100 bet loses $2.38 on average. At -110 a side, the cut is 4.5 percent. That is a fee for flipping a coin. Fine for $10 and a laugh. Just call it what it is.
Two-way props are often dealt at -115 a side, a cut of 6.5 percent. Many props are offered one way only (a player to score the first touchdown, with no price on him not scoring), so to see the cut you have to turn every player's price into a percentage and add them. Do it once and you will stake those markets differently.
The public mostly bets on things to happen: the over, the yes, the touchdown. Books price for that, and when I was setting numbers I'd have been a fool not to.
In fairness, props also carry the lowest limits, because they are the numbers the book is least sure of. Serious bettors do look there. They are not betting the coin toss.
Same game parlays and live bets
The Super Bowl is the day of the same game parlay. The legs are related, the book prices the relationship itself, and you can't check the payout with a multiplication. I'd treat it as a ticket for the party and keep it small.
Live betting runs from kickoff to the last snap. Prices change after every play, bets are accepted after a short delay, the book can suspend a market whenever it likes, and the cut is usually wider than before the game. Decide beforehand what you would do and at what price. A plan made at halftime, after three hours of watching and a few drinks, is not a plan.
The week before
Any book that is allowed to take bets where you live will have the game, and our list of sportsbooks says what I think of each. Open the account, verify your identity and deposit some days ahead, since the busiest day of the year is a poor day to learn that your documents are still being checked.
Compare the price at more than one book, because books compete hard for this game and the spread or the juice often differs. Before you take a boost, work out what the bet should pay without it.
Then fix your total for the game before the day, at the 1 or 2 percent of bankroll you would stake on any game, and count the props and parlays as the cost of the evening. Betting bigger because the season is ending is how February gets expensive.
It is the last game of the season. It doesn't have to be your largest bet of it.