Super Bowl Pointspread Odds and Ends

Added on Feb 06, 2011 by Jack Thurman in

Super Bowl

After an opening move due to Green Bay Packers money looking to bet on Super Bowl action, the line for the big game has remained relatively stable at -2.5 until the past 24 hours. Since then, there seems to be some upward pressure on the line from last minute bettors looking to lay the points with the Packers. Looking at my odds screen right now there’s only a few books that have held at -2′ and all have a moneyline attached (eg: -2′ -125) which indicates that they’re holding more Packers money but don’t want to move the number onto the ‘key number’ of 3. This isn’t a bad bookmaking strategy, as it prevents the book from getting ‘middled’ if the game lands exactly on the number 3.

The total actually saw some downward pressure earlier this week but has rebounded and is now trending upward–not surprising since the sort of casual bettors the Super Bowl attracts typically bet the favorite and the Over. I’m hoping that the downward pressure earlier this week wasn’t due to the weather–bettors could have been making the kneejerk reaction that bad weather was conducive to an Under game without realizing that the game was being played indoors under the roof at Cowboys Stadium. More than likely, this was not the case.

Interestingly, a tight pointspread in the Super Bowl doesn’t mean a close and exciting game will result at least based on historical precedent. There have been nine Super Bowls with a pointspread of 3 or less and the average margin of victory in these games is 15.6 points. The most recent game with a betting line of a field goal or less came in Super Bowl XXXV when the Baltimore Ravens were -3 point favorites over the New York Giants. This defensively monstrous team ended up beating the Giants 34-7 for the franchise’s only Super Bowl title to date.