In 1986, a refrigerator forever changed the face of Super Bowl betting.
Though gamblers had long been betting on the game's outcome, intrepid oddsmakers that year offered an additional whimsical wager: Would the Chicago Bears' 335-pound defensive lineman William "The Refrigerator" Perry score a touchdown? Betting opened at 15/1. So once the Bears were well on their way to a rout, coach Mike Ditka — allegedly steamed that Vegas underestimated his team — sent Perry out to punch the ball in from the one-yard line, costing Vegas dearly and ushering in what would become a booming subset of sports gambling: proposition bets.
As Super Bowl gambling ballooned over the years — bettors dropped $119.4 million on legal wagers last year — so, too, did the array of prop bets. This year, gamblers can pick from more than 500 different props covering everything from the opening coin toss to the stock market's performance in the post-game afterglow. (Nevada only permits wagers that can be verified in the box score; there is no such restriction for online and offshore oddsmakers.)
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But who comes up with the offbeat bets? And how the heck do they accurately determine the odds that, say, Marshawn Lynch will grab his junk (again) to taunt his opponents?
At Bovada, one of the leading gambling sites, a team of oddsmakers tosses out ideas for potential props before settling on the best ones. Some are evergreen — who will score first — while others are chosen based on what is "most relative to the teams playing and any stories surrounding them," says Bovada Sportsbook Manager Kevin Bradley. With Deflategate hanging over this year's game, that means you can bet on how many times the broadcast will directly mention deflated footballs.
The process of setting odds for props varies depending on the subject matter.
The more empirical props involve a heavy amount of statistical research, plus a careful analysis of historical betting trends. The first part is pretty intuitive; you'd understandably want to base future predictions on past performance. But to ensure there is enough action on both sides of a bet, oddsmakers must also consider how they expect the market to behave. As a result, some oddsmakers don't even set the literal coin toss as a statistical coin toss.
That process holds true for cross-sport props, in which gamblers can bet on comparative outcomes from two separate games. For instance, you can bet on whether the Miami Heat's Chris Bosh will score more points on Sunday than Marshawn Lynch will have rushing attempts.
As the props get weirder though, oddsmakers have less reliable information at their disposal. How long will it take Idina Menzel to sing the national anthem? And will she forget a word? What will be the color and cut of Bill Belichick's hoodie? And will he smile at any point during the game? ("No" is the obvious favorite on the last question.)
"We do props every day for every sport so we have a lot of experience doing team and player props," Bradley says. For the more exotic of the bunch though, where empirical evidence is harder to come by, "there is a lot of guesswork."
That doesn't mean there is no research though — it's just a bit more creative.
As Bradley notes, there is a database of information on what Belichick has worn in every game he's coached, which could offer some predictive value. And for the national anthem's length — one of the most popular props every year — oddsmakers analyze a singer's past renditions to determine an average duration. For one oddsmaker projecting Christina Aguilera's performance in Super Bowl 45, that meant listening to 10 recordings of the song — the earliest made when the pop star was 11 years old.
But oddsmakers don't always get a good line from the outset, and gamblers pounce on what they perceive as easy money. This is particularly true of the stranger props that are harder to forecast, so those numbers are liable to "move quite a bit" as the game nears, Bradley says.
Flubbing the odds can be disastrous, as was the case last year when the Broncos' first play from scrimmage resulted in a safety. For those who wagered on the incredibly unlikely outcome, that meant a huge payday at the expense of the casinos.
"The game was five minutes old and we were already down $130,000," Nick Bogdanovich, an oddsmaker with William Hill, told The Associated Press.
Repetition and the accumulation of more and more data helps to blunt that danger. Which is why oddsmakers are by and large deft at finding a middle ground to ensure, as casinos do, that the house always wins.
"Props are not easy at the onset," Bradley says, "but do get easier over time."
