Books win Super Bowl 50
By Micah Roberts
VegasInsider.com
All indications across Nevada sports books suggest that Sunday’s 24-10 win by the Broncos will set a state record for Super Bowl handle surpassing the $119.4 million handled two years ago when the Seattle hammered Denver.
“We ended up squeaking out a win on the game and the futures win helped us overall,” said MGM Resorts VP of race and sports Jay Rood. “It wasn’t as bad as last year, but I think a record handle (for Nevada) is probably going to be set.”
Rood's 10 MGM properties across the strip -- two others in Reno -- are a great barometer for the state because of the sheer volume they do with so many thousands of visitors lodging in their rooms and making wagers on the game at their books throughout the last two weeks. Unlike the last couple of years, Rood didn’t take a seven-figure wager on the game, which is very telling on how much volume they did if exceeding the past two seasons.
Last year's handle in Nevada, with New England beating Seattle, was $115.9 million with only a $3.2 million win, which comes out to a tiny 2.8 percent hold. Even though reactions were mixed around town on the results, it would appear that all the books could collectively have a higher win than that, but will come no where close to the record $19.6 million won (16.5%) in 2014 when almost everyone bet the Broncos No.1 ranked offense would beat Seattle.
“It was a small win for us. We won on the props but lost on the game,” said South Point sports book director Bert Osborne. “The Broncos to UNDER parlay and teaser came in and was too much to overcome. The good news is that handle was up about 33 percent with us.”
Business was outstanding over the past two weeks. Station Casinos VP of race and sports Art Manteris said on Saturday that he had never seen such consistent wagering in the two weeks leading up to the game, and he’s been running books in town since Joe Montana won his first Super Bowl.
The crazy thing about the Super Bowl this year was that it was all one-sided betting for the first 10 days. Everyone liked Carolina early on after seeing them destroy Arizona 49-15 in the NFC Championship game.
The public bet the Panthers quickly from a 3.5-point favorite up to -5.5 and eventually -6 where it stayed until Wednesday, and that‘s when the big Broncos money came.
It was rumored that the most successful sports bettor in Las Vegas history, Billy Walters, had all his associates find whatever +6 on Denver they could, and they found it everywhere.
At the time, the sports books needed the money bad. In fact, the only error Mr. Walters made in his masterful plan of crushing Las Vegas was not waiting longer because a few books said they were close to going to +6.5 if they hadn’t gotten those big Broncos wagers. The disparity from Panthers to Broncos action was huge. William Hill sports books had 91 percent of their action on the spread taking Carolina through Thursday.
Then the weekend crowd came in and the gap started closing. People were betting Denver and they were taking them on the money-line and parlaying them together with the UNDER.
On Sunday, Osborne said his South Point sports book had completely flipped their stance of needing Carolina after being so heavy on them for the first 13 day of action, which is incredible when thinking about this being the most bet game of the year.
“It was like a good NFL Sunday for us,” said Stratosphere assistant sports book manager Hugh Citron. “We had too much late Denver money-line action to weather. We ended up being flat on the props and the 2-point conversion happening really hurt us.”
Perhaps one of the biggest roars of the day from the sports book crowds was when Peyton Manning completed a two-point conversion pass with just over three minutes to go in the game, which gave the Broncos a 24-10 lead, and also gave bettors a +190 payout. They also wanted overtime (+500), and they also wanted a safety (+500) to no avail, but did get their successful conversion.
For the first time ever in Nevada, bettors were able to bet on who will win the Super Bowl Most Valuable Player award and if you ask most books after the results, they’ll probably say they wish they could do without it.
“We lost on the MVP prop with Von Miller,” said Rood. “We opened at 60/1 odds and closed at 15/1.”
Ouch, that was a big payout.
Overall, for party goers, bettors and the books, it was a win-win experience for all. Las Vegas once again proved that no city has the ability to do what it does.