How did sportsbooks fare in Super Bowl 58?

I talked with several bookmakers locally and nationally about how the books did in the Big Game

The NFL — and betting — world can now take a collective breath (and sigh of relief), as Super Bowl 58 between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers went off without a hitch. The first Super Bowl in Las Vegas was a massive success by all accounts — sure, there was a little traffic and Saturday night was aptly described by a few people as a Lord of the Flies situation on The Strip — as there wasn’t any kind of reputational scar for the league from hosting its biggest game in the city it had shied away from for so long.

In a way, it marks one of the final checkmarks that legal sports betting is here to stay, and that we’re in a much different sports world than we were five or 10 years ago.

From a gambling perspective, it was a fascinating game. For two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, the betting public was all over the Chiefs moneyline and spread, and a lot of the big money was on the 49ers -1/-1.5 and San Francisco ML. Of the eight reported bets of $1 million or more that I confirmed, six were on the 49ers in some capacity. One bettor smartly had $1M on the 49ers first-half spread of -0.5 at PointsBet, and ended up cashing — the others were on the 49ers to win or cover the full game. And many sportsbooks I spoke with had the majority of their six-figure wagers on San Francisco.

The biggest reported bet that cashed was a $1.1 million wager on the Chiefs +2 at BetMGM. There was also a $1M wager on Chiefs +2 at Circa (ticket below).

As for the actual game, with San Francisco leading 19-16 heading into the final moments of the fourth quarter, sportsbooks were sitting pretty. The game was poised to go UNDER the total of 47 or 47.5, the 49ers were winning (the side that most books I spoke with needed) and the books were in good shape in the props market, since many popular players (Travis Kelce, Isiah Pacheco, Deebo Samuel, Brandon Aiyuk, George Kittle) hadn’t scored a TD in the game.

But Patrick Mahomes was on the other side, and he led Kansas City down for a game-tying field goal, which was crushing for books because it meant the YES on the Super Bowl going to overtime cashed — a prop that closed as high as +900 at Caesars.

Caesars reportedly lost seven figures on that prop alone, as Caesars Sportsbook vice president of trading Craig Mucklow told me on Sunday night, “The YES overtime will be one of the biggest prop payouts since I've been here.”

While the average bet at Caesars was only $16 on the prop, the ticket count was 8-1 in favor of the YES and the handle 2-1. That liability adds up real quick.

Mahomes and the Chiefs went on to win 25-22 in overtime, keeping the game under 47.5 (where the majority of the OVER bets had been taken) but several other popular props like Christian McCaffrey OVER 129.5 total yards, Brock Purdy OVER 20.5 completions and 246.5 passing yards and Mahomes OVER 1.5 passing TDs hit.

So, how did the sportsbooks do overall on the game?