Is There Any Significant Super Bowl Betting Support For Denver?
Super Bowl 50 will take place on Sunday in Santa Clara, California and by now just about everyone is sick of the ‘pre game hype’. This is true not only for NFL football fans but for sports betting enthusiasts and even more so for bookmakers and sports book managers. The two weeks before the Super Bowl is a nightmare for bookmakers. As if it wasn’t bad enough trying to manage a sportsbook in the busiest week of the year they’ve also got to deal with the mainstream sports media showing up and asking questions. For whatever reason, it seems that every mainstream media source sends someone to Las Vegas to ‘cover’ the betting on Super Bowl games. While it’s good to see an overdue change in American attitudes toward sports betting the majority of the mainstream sports media–let alone the non-sports media–is completely clueless on the subject. Even if they mean well, they don’t know how to contextualize the information they receive.
That appears to be the case with a number of articles today that attempt to suggest that after one sided action on Carolina during the Super Bowl betting cycle there’s finally some money coming in on Denver. But how significant is the support for the Broncos? Based on the line movements I’m seeing not very. There’s definitely some small line movement that would suggest if nothing else that money coming in on Carolina has ebbed. Until today, it was all Carolina -5.5 or -6 across the board. Now, there’s a few -5 and -4.5 here and there. There have also been Las Vegas bookmakers interviewed claiming that a ‘buyback’ on Denver has started. Some are circulating the story that Billy Walters–the king of Las Vegas ‘wise guys’–has taken a position on Denver. The city is lousy with sports bettors who follow his moves–or moves that might be his–blindly.
I’m not buying any of it. Not that it’s a coordinated move, but taken as a whole it looks like bookmakers are trying to attract some Denver money. They don’t want to move off of the key number of six so why not suggest that there’s a swell of ‘smart’ money on Denver? It might get any Broncos backers that are on the fence to step to the window thinking that they better get while the getting is good.
Here’s why I’m not buying:
1) You should never listen to a bookmaker telling you who to bet on. Most give an honest assessment of the situation but it’s important to ‘read between the lines’. Many of the bookmaker quotes I’ve read use terms like ‘the gap is narrowing’ or ‘more Denver money is showing up’. This can be misconstrued by a writer to suggest that the ‘sharp money’ is now on Denver.
2) The line movements I’ve seen are insignificant. Some ersatz experts have pointed to Pinnacle’s move to -4.5 as a sign that the ‘sharp’ money is on Denver. While Pinny attracts plenty of sharp money, they also attract a ton of volume from bettors of all types. This line move might be based on a flood of Denver money, but it’s not necessarily ‘sharp’ money.
3) The line movements are insignificant Part 2: When evaluating NFL football line moves all numbers aren’t created equal. A move from 3 to 3′ might represent a half point movement but is much more significant than a move from, say, 5.5 to 4. The number 3 is known as a ‘key number’–it’s the most commonly occurring margin of victory. The opposite of a ‘key number’ is known as a ‘dead number’. It’s not a particularly tough decision to move a line from one ‘dead number’ to another.
4) While most books like to be in line with the rest of the market there are some instances where they’ll use line valuation to ‘take a position’ and attract more money on a particular side. A book that had this game at -6 when most were at -5.5 could have been trying to ‘scare off’ Seattle money or beg for Denver money. As noted above, the move on or off of a key number is significant. And if a book was trying to attract Denver money to no avail would they move the line the other way through a ‘key number’ in hopes of creating an illusory ‘steam play’ on the Broncos? You bet they would…