The Super Bowl is when your bookmaking business should have an influx of handle. Your players will refer their friends, who will refer their friends, and give you a wealth of bettors from novice to expert.
The question is, what will you do to ensure you secure a profit? You’re going to have the handle, but you might not necessarily get the profit margin worth of a pay per head bookie.
To ensure you come out of the Super Bowl with a tidy profit, we’ll give you some tips to dominate the big weekend.
Don’t Forget You Control the Odds
Reminder: You’re not a sports bettor anymore. You’re a bookie. You command the bookie software; your Super Bowl odds are not set in stone.
As your handle increases, so will the potential for you to be very offside before the Super Bowl kickoff. You don’t want to be in that predicament. The juice attached to the spread is generally -110 for a reason. The expectation is that there is a guaranteed juice to the house if you balance action. Spreads were not created for a sportsbook to be rooting for one team to win. They were made to ensure there’s money on both sides, therefore securing the “juice” – AKA the commission for offering sportsbook services – in the middle.
When a spread isn’t creating enough balanced action, it’s up to the bookie to move the juice to make the side lacking more enticing. That means making one side EVEN or +110 to balance things out.
And if that doesn’t work, you can move the spread to balance things out. We would suggest only moving things by a half point or two. As if you move your spread too off the public odds, you could have sharps suddenly smothering your spread until you’re offside on the other side of the spread.
The Coin Toss will be One of your Biggest Bets
The Super Bowl coin toss has somehow become one of the more popular props on the event. That’s for a couple of reasons: One. You don’t have to wait for the Super Bowl teams to be decided. Two, the coin toss before kickoff is one of the more accessible prop bets to understand.
The best part about offering coin toss bets is while the old adage, “tails never fails,” is embedded into football fans’ brains, heads or tails in the Super Bowl are pretty much 50/50.
Heads has been hit 27 times while tails has hit 29 times, that’s 48% and 52%, respectively. And while some sportsbooks may not allow their players to parlay the coin flip, we suggest altering that rule. There will be plenty of players that would be interested in having the coin flip connected to other props in the game for the potential of one big win.
Promote Fun Props
The most entertaining part of the Super Bowl, outside of the halftime show and the actual game, is the potentially crazy prop bets.
If you choose the proper pay per head site that offers good sportsbook software. You should have your pick at crazy props to advertise, such as which company will air a commercial first or which song with the halftime performer play first. You could even bet on the length of the national anthem.
Make sure you advertise the amount of prop bets you have available in your sportsbook as much as possible. The crazier, the better!
Super Bowl Spread History
A couple of things to remember when the Super Bowl spread is officially available to the public.
The largest upset in NFL history is the New York Jets over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl lll in 1969. The Jets were 18-point underdogs until “Broadway” Joe Namath led the Jets to a 16-7 win. We doubt you’ll see a monster spread like that anytime soon.
One thing to keep in mind if/when you’re adjusting your odds based on action is that there have only been seven instances where the favorite won the game straight up but failed to cover. If the Super Bowl spread is less than three, the chances shrink even more.
In terms of the total, the ‘over/under’ has gone 27-28 in the first 55 Super Bowl matchups. No total was posted on Super Bowl I between the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs.
Despite this stat, anticipate that your bettors will bet on the over more often than not. Do your best to balance action but do it knowing it’s par for the course for bettors to expect and hope for a high-scoring Super Bowl.
Super Bowl Futures
We’ve said this before, but make sure your odds for the next Super Bowl as up as soon as possible. It’ll take about two-to-three days before the sports media starts shifting the conversation on who is the favorite or dark horse for the next Super Bowl. The quicker you have the odds available, the quicker you can cash in on the hype.