There is a very big football game happening this weekend.
So big, in fact, that, if you're a sportsbook, you know this game as only the affectionately titled "Big Game," even when everybody else calls it the Super Bowl.
Here with us to talk odds ahead of Sunday's matchup between the Patriots and Eagles is Art Manteris.
We may call him the Professor, but he's best known as the vice president of race and sportsbook for Station Casinos.
DISCUSSION HIGHLIGHTS:
The basics of betting:
There is a lot of ways to bet the Super Bowl. The most common way is betting the point spread, which is the traditional way of betting on football and basketball games -- where you are laying 11 to win 10 against the point spread.
In this particular case, you're beating the Patriots -4 points and laying $110 to win $100 or $220 to win $200. You get your beat amount back. So, if you bet $220 on the Patriots -4 and they should win, you would get back $420 bucks -- and conversely the same thing on the Eagles. If you're taking +4 points and they should happen to win the game or lose for less than 4 points then you would collect your $420 equally.
The next most common way of betting a big game like this is the money line. The money line is odds of winning the game. Around town, you're generally laying 18 to 10 on the Patriots side to win or taking about 3 to 2, or a little bit higher than that, on the underdog Eagles to win the game. If you took the Eagles as +160 right now and they win the game, you bet $10 -- you would win $16 -- you would get $26 back for your $10 wager.
The Patriots have been favorites from the beginning -- why?
I told someone recently that this Patriots team has really haunted me for 20 years on these big games, where we just seem to have zig-zagged the wrong way on Patriot outcomes for most of the Super Bowls and big games that they've been involved in over the past long time -- since Belichick and Brady were in there.
We'll see if they can maintain their dominance against a really young, hungry and talented team.
Where are you seeing the money coming down?
The money has been surprisingly heavy on the Eagles. We opened this game as a 6-point favorite and it's now down to 4. It might trickle back up a notch or two but right now we have an inordinate amount of money on the Eagles.
So, what happens Super Bowl weekend will overshadow what has happened for the prior two weeks of wagering.
What are some of the more interesting prop bets?
There are a ton of propositions available and they vary a little bit from sportsbook to sportsbook. The ones that generate the most handle are usually the various point spread props -- where you could bet the game, not from the usual point spread but you can alter the point spread a little bit and bet the Eagles or Patriots -.5 or +2.5 points or -14 points and so on and so forth. There's usually half dozen or so of those special point spreads. If you think the Patriots are going to kill them and you're confident enough to put your money on the Patriots -14.5, you could take 3.5 to 1 for your money.
The game MVP is always a popular proposition. The player to score the first touchdown is always a popular proposition. This year, our team of bookmakers has come up with some interesting props.
Are we going to see an over-under total of 47 or 48 points, given the offenses we'll see on display?
We opened the total for this game at 47.5 right after the AFC Championship game, and it has trickled up a little bit. We've been at 48.5 for about the past week. It's hard to say whether that's going to go up or down.
There seems to be a little bit of value on the under, because the calculation for these two teams is a little bit less than the 48.5, but Super Bowls tend to be a little bit inflated.
Are you expecting another big handle at Station Casinos?
I am. I'm virtually certain we're going to continue to see growth. Wagering handles in Nevada have been just phenomenal over the course of my career. But watching the way this industry has grown and what we have done as casino operators has been phenomenal.
Art Manteris, vice president, race and sportsbook, Station Casinos
