About 20 minutes after the Super Bowl wrapped up Sunday night, Treasure Island sportsbook director Tony Nevill didn’t mince words.
“I’d be doing a lot better if I didn’t have to grade over, over, over on both teams on the proposition bets,” Nevill said following the Philadelphia Eagles’ 41-33 upset of the New England Patriots as a 4.5-point underdog. “This was a horrible outcome, and one of the few times where the props were so disastrous that it ruined the whole day. Everything we won on the futures book, the moneyline, the total and the side, we gave back to all the props.”
Indeed, Nevill said his book on the Strip did OK to the side, total and moneyline. But in a game that featured an NFL record for total yards, there was no stopping the props either.
“Everybody had the over on all the player props,” Nevill said. “And all of them went over, especially on the Philadelphia side.”
It didn’t take long for those prop results to rear their heads, either. Jay Kornegay, who oversees the Westgate Las Vegas Superbook as vice president of race and sports for Westgate, sent a text at halftime that simply read, “Props are really looking ugly at this point.”
By game’s end, he elaborated a bit more.
“Small winner on the game. Good on the futures. Destroyed on the props,” he said. “Hoping for a small winner (overall) when all the smoke clears.”
Kornegay later followed up that the Superbook indeed ended up with a very small win.
While props played a big role in a very diminished win for most Vegas books, the moneyline was also a huge factor. Over the past two weeks, the so-called Bettor-X dropped a $3 million Eagles moneyline bet on MGM Resorts books and a $1 million Eagles moneyline wager at William Hill US, along with mid- to high-six-figure bets at CG Technology, South Point and Wynn Las Vegas.
Jay Rood, MGM Resorts vice president of race and sports, said the $3 million wager – which presented the largest risk that’s ever come across his desk – was made in the +150 to +180 range, meaning the bettor won between $4.5 million and $5.4 million on that one wager alone.
MGM still came out with a very modest win, which Rood attributed to strong in-game wagering on the Patriots and extraordinarily strong New England handle at halftime. Rood said bettors were apparently expecting reprisal of last year’s comeback victory over Atlanta. MGM books also cushioned the blow with a $500,000 Patriots moneyline bet that came in Sunday morning.
“We’re gonna be a small winner. Not quite what Jimmy Vaccaro would classify as a ham sandwich, but it’s definitely not a steak dinner anywhere either,” said Rood, who noted pregame that an Eagles outright win and the total going over – which many bettors parlayed – was the worst possible outcome. “The real tough liability to fade was the combination, everyone doing Philly and over, Philly moneyline and over. The over was one of our big liabilities. First quarter, I was a little bit hopeful, but I let go of that hope pretty quickly in the second quarter.”
William Hill wasn’t nearly as fortunate, finishing with a multimillion-dollar loss. A news release shortly after the game noted that three seven-figure bets on the Eagles – two of $1 million apiece on the moneyline, one of $1.6 million at +4.5 – created $4.6 million in losses alone. Further, 54 percent of pointspread tickets were on Philly, 75 percent of moneyline wagers were on the Eagles, and 56 percent of tickets on the total had the over, which easily hit, soaring past the closing total of 49.
Jason Simbal, vice president of risk management for CG Technology, said the overall result was not good for his books, either.
“Lost to the game, mostly on the moneyline,” Simbal texted shortly after the game ended. “Small loss on the spread. Props were no good, loser there too. Biggest loser was the alternate pointspread Eagles -7.5.”
Offshore at BetDSI, odds consultant Scott Cooley said when all the math was done, it was pretty much a wash.
“We basically broke even on the game as a whole,” Cooley said. “We lost on the spread and total, won the moneyline and did well on the props. We won big on the second half.”
Which would indicate plenty of second-half Patriots wagers came in and went awry for bettors. And BetDSI’s futures book worked out well, too, since New England was the top liability and lost, while the Eagles represented the 10th-greatest liability.
And BetDSI came out ahead on one of the more amusing props, even when it looked like the offshore book was dead in the water: How many times will the word “Dilly” be said during the Super Bowl broadcast? The over/under was 12.5, and BetDSI got slammed so hard on the over that it had to pull the prop off the board.
But in the end, Cooley and crew finished on the right side.
“There were 12 Dillys on the dot,” he said. “Amazing.”
Patrick Everson is a Las Vegas-based senior writer for Covers. Follow him on Twitter: @Covers_Vegas.
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