Canada's Fascinating Ebbs and Flows of Super Bowl Betting
Betting on the Super Bowl naturally saw the same interesting ebbs and flows as the game itself, won by the Kansas City Chiefs, on a late field goal, 38-35, beating the Philadelphia Eagles.
Tougher to a get a read on the volume of NFL betting for the Super Bowl in Canada, an epochal moment for the country on the sports betting front since this was the first Super Bowl held under a fully open, regulated, competitive Ontario market.
GeoComply Tracks the Big Betting Numbers
Vancouver-based GeoComply had a news release today showing a record 100 million Super Bowl online betting transactions across 23 U.S. states and the District of Columbia with legal, online sports betting during the weekend. GeoComply processes geolocation checks to verify online sports bettors’ locations.
GeoComply conducted 100 million geolocation checks on Saturday and Sunday, a 25 per cent increase from last year’s Super Bowl weekend. New York led the way in the U.S. with 13.9 million GeoComply geolocation checks.
Breaking Down Canada's Bets
Still, there are some interesting Super Bowl betting storylines shared by some operators. Most of the sportsbooks don’t specify the regional breakdown for these, but Ontario is included:
The top moneymakers at Sportsbooks: Patrick Mahomes over 2.5 passing touchdowns (2.5), Jalen Hurts to score first game TD, Travis Kelce to score second game TD, A.J. Brown to score the third game TD (201.0), and the coin toss result (tails) on the novelty prop side (2.0).
The most bet market at DraftKings was moneyline – KC 2.0, and Eagles 1.83 pregame; Eagles 1.21, Chiefs 4.5 at the half; Eagles 1.4, Chiefs 3.0 after the Eagles field goal to give them a 27-21 in the third quarter; Chiefs 1.18, Eagles 5.1 after Skyy Moore’s TD to give the Chiefs a 35-27 lead; 1.01 Chiefs and 23.0 Eagles after the infamous holding call.
PointsBet Canada had one Ontario bettor place a live bet on the Chiefs for $12,000 at 4.3 odds, and the bet paid out just under $40,000.
According to BetRivers, a few fun prop bets that hit Sunday: Octopus (where one player scores a TD and a 2-point conversion on the same drive), 14.0; any kick to hit the crossbar (5.5); Hurt’s three TDs (19.0), and the exact score (351.0).
Action on the Over-Under (51) backed by 70.3 per cent of total tickets and 67 per cent of money (with plenty of time to cash their tickets since the KC TD with 12:04 left took the points total to 55) helped deliver the most heavily wagered game in the sportsbooks’ history based on tickets sold.
“The Chiefs winning the Super Bowl was a good outcome for the sportsbook but bettors made money with the over hitting (50.5). We saw record handle on the game driven by continued expansion of legalized sports betting,” says Seamus Magee, Sports Trader, BetMGM.
Notable winning bets at BetMGM was $500,000 to win $525,000 on the Chiefs Moneyline (2.5) and $547,000 to win $327,600 on the Over 49.5 points (1.8).
And the Chiefs hold top spot in BetMGM’s 2023-24 Super Bowl Futures: 7.0, followed by the Bengals (9.5) the Bills (10.0), Eagles (10.0) and 49ers (10.0).
