Super Bowl Betting Handle Predictions
ESPN is good for two things: sports stats and inappropriately-injected political commentary unrelated to said sports stats. What ESPN isn’t so good for, it turns out, is analyzing those stats to provide meaningful news for sports bettors. Case in point: the current report about how much money American gamblers are going to wager on the Super Bowl. Citing nebulous numbers, ESPN’s “experts” say that Super Bowl 52 will see $4.76 billion in US betting. Of course, the company is basing this prediction on little more than ill-researched “guidance” from the American Gaming Association (a.k.a. the AGA, an arm of the US-based casino industry with no conflicts of interest in selling its metrics, I assure you), but it still merits a closer look. Because frankly, that number seems low. Very low.
Consider last year’s Super Bowl haul (again, per the AGA): $4.7 billion. Going off of that, these analysts apparently believe that – with its record number of lines and props at both Nevada casinos and legal online sportsbooks (Bovada, BetOnline, BetDSI, etc.) – this year’s big game will only grow last year’s handle by a meager $60 million. Given prior annual growth in excess of 10 times that number, and given that the Patriots are playing for the title yet again, it’s hard to imagine that the handle would stagnate this much. In reality, with sports betting being less taboo than any time over the last several generations, more people than ever are already betting on Super Bowl 52, and with nearly a week to go till kickoff, there is no discernable lull in the action.
It’s also worth noting that this estimate is undoubtedly tempered by the NFL’s ratings problems over the 2017 season, which saw the product crippled by controversies of almost every kind. However, bad ratings don’t historically translate into bad betting handles. Sports bettors simply don’t care about audience numbers (unless, of course, they’re putting money on some wacky wager like BetDSI’s Nielsen Ratings line, which currently has an over/under of 45.5). Certainly, the more fans a sport has, the more folks will eventually bet on that sport, but this is the Super Bowl – it’s the single biggest sports betting match in the world! A few guys taking a knee during an embarrassing, ego-dripping National Anthem won’t change Joe Average’s mind about betting for or against the Evil Empire.
Ultimately, though, all this talk about the Super Bowl 52 handle is meaningless anyway. It’s predicated on this weird “3%” conclusion, where the AGA claims that legal sports betting in Las Vegas only accounts for 3% of all US-based Super Bowl betting. (The remaining 97% is characterized as “illegal,” which is another steaming pile of #FakeNews.) How they arrive at this number is anyone’s guess, and – given reputable estimates of between $200 billion and $500 billion being gambled by Americans on sports every year – the number seems incredibly low. The Super Bowl is the sports betting event of the year by a large margin, and it is exceedingly unlikely that the big game only accounts for 2.5% of the industry’s yearly handle in the US.
Of course, none of this matters. If you want to bet on Super Bowl 52, you’re not alone. LegalGamblingUSA knows a record number of folks – both first-time bettors and seasoned vets – are going to gamble on the game. And if you can’t get out to Las Vegas to place your bets, that’s perfectly alright. The best legal online sportsbooks and betting shops offer just as many options and the same level of customer service you’d expect out of Sin City (minus the broken kneecaps, of course, because you can only gamble online with what you’ve deposited into your account). In fact, as long as the AGA keeps underselling the impact of legal Internet sports betting, you’re guaranteed to get the best bang for your buck by placing all of your Super Bowl wagers online.
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