A local Florida TV reporter on Friday disrupted the international betting market on one of the Super Bowl’s most popular proposals with a 2 minute, 16 second video he posted on Twitter.
Zach Maskavich, a multimedia journalist for WESH Channel 2 in Orlando, was working in the Hillsborough Community College parking lot in front of Tampa Bay’s Raymond James Stadium, site of the Super Bowl LV, when he heard the rehearsal for the national anthem begin.
This is the first Super Bowl that Maskavich, 31, covers, and all week his friends asked him to keep an eye and ear for inside information on everything from the color of the Gatorade that the teams were using, to information about pre-game and musical performances in between. Then, when artists Jazmine Sullivan and Eric Church began their rehearsal performance of the national anthem, Maskavich pulled out his phone and made a video of himself timing how long the execution would take.
Betting on the length of the national anthem in the Super Bowl has long been one of the most popular innovative bets on international sports betting. Gamblers and oddsmakers scour the Internet for clues to past performances. State regulators do not allow US sportsbooks to bid for fear of corruption, but that has not prevented punters – domestic and foreign – from trying to determine how long the national anthem will last each year.
The over / under in the Sullivan and Church duet was going on for about two minutes on Friday, but that would change quickly. Maskavich tweeted his video at 6:30 pm Eastern time, showing that the rehearsal lasted 2 minutes and 16 seconds. In Australia, the bookmaker PointsBet reported a wave of over-action that appeared shortly after the video was posted, causing them to stop betting on the prop.
“I thought it was really funny,” Maskavich told ESPN on Saturday. “Some of the responses were hilarious; some people are really crazy.”
Several sports bets reported making money in a hurry hours before Maskavich posted his video. Pinnacle Sports, an online sportsbook based in Curaçao, had the over / under set at 1:58, with -110 odds to bet on both sides. Around 3:30 pm, Pinnacle started taking enough bets in the over to raise the price to -1,500, before the bets stopped.
Betonline.ag, an online sportsbook based in Panama, said it received about two dozen $ 250 limit bets during the three-minute period at around 3pm on Friday.
“Almost every year there is a leak in the national anthem, and we see a wave of unilateral action a few days before the game,” Dave Mason, Betonline brand manager, told ESPN on Saturday. “Yesterday, this wave of action was more suspicious than in previous years. In a few seconds, we made about two dozen maximum bets on more accurate accounts. They kept on betting from 2:00 to 2:10. At that point, we knew that there was some very strong information out there somewhere, so we decided to reduce the chances. “
Living in Florida with no legal sports betting options, Maskavich said he is not a great player, but he knew people were interested in the national anthem.
“I had a feeling I was going to gain a little strength, leading to the Super Bowl and people liking prop bets,” Maskavich said Saturday morning. “But I didn’t think it was going to explode like it did. People are looking for me, wondering if Vegas paid me to do this, and all these other crazy antics.”
This is not the first time that Maskavich has gone viral. In 2018, when covering a high school game, a video of him being hit by a football reached the SportsCenter “Not Top 10”. Still, he was surprised by the responses he received on Twitter to his post of the national anthem. Some called him a “man of the people” for transmitting the information; others were angry because they believe he screwed up the action and stopped the books from betting. One person said he would not rest until he was fired.
Maskavich’s favorite responses, however, referred to his unfortunate collision with the soccer ball. “The quarterback should have played harder,” wrote a respondent who retweeted the video.