With the kickoff of the Super Bowl just minutes away, the scene inside the Las Vegas sports betting scene is intense.
Bookmakers look at their computers, and an executive walks up and down, already sweating in his Sunday suit. Bets are coming, millions of dollars are at stake. It is an uninterrupted action.
Suddenly, the room is silent and everyone stops to look at the TVs. Referees, team captains and the coin tosser are gathering in midfield. In sports betting, there is a sigh of expectation when the coin is thrown into the air. Heads or tails to determine which team catches the ball first – and who gets the money bet on the heads or tails.
The coin turns from end to end, bounces in the field and falls in the face. The stressed boss asks quickly: “How do we do?”
An employee hastily evaluates the bets, takes a deep breath and responds fearfully: “We just lost $ 38,000. We are stuck in 38 coins and the game hasn’t even started yet.”
The boss asks another question: “What the hell?”
The Super Bowl heads or tails can be the top two seconds in sports betting, and the amount of money that changes hands is ridiculous. Of the hundreds of betting options in the Super Bowl, from the color of the sports drink poured into the winning coach, whom the MVP first thanks in his acceptance speech, more money is going heads or tails than any of them.
“You did all this work to launch all these props, create cross-sports and everything,” said Dave Sharapan, a former Las Vegas bookmaker. “And the head or crown prop is the most betting prop of all the props, every year.”
Dude vs. crown
The launch of the Super Bowl coin has been on the Las Vegas sports betting table for decades. Heads or tails, which team will win the draw and whether that team will decide whether to catch the ball, play defense or postpone it to the second half – you can bet on all of that. And many people do, despite being charged more than five cents on the dollar for what is essentially a 50-50 bid. (This Stanford University study used the angular momentum vector to prove that a coin tossed and held in hand tends to fall the same way it started. But the Super Bowl coin falls to the ground and often bounces, and in addition , what does Stanford do, anyway?)
Vince Bohbot, on the other hand, knows all about the real currency used for the Super Bowl. Bohbot is executive vice president of The Highland Mint in Melbourne, Florida. In the last 28 Super Bowls, The Highland Mint made the coin for the opening bid.
In the 1990s, coins were made of pure silver. Now, at the peak silver price, the coins feature silver plating and selective 24 carat gold plating. The coins are similar in size to a silver dollar. They weigh about 30 grams and have a diameter of 33 millimeters.
This year’s coin features sea waves running horizontally between the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers logos on one side. The Super Bowl LV logo, with the Lombardi Trophy between L and V, is on the other side. Traditionally, the side with the Lombardi Trophy is designated as the head. Both sides weigh about the same, according to Bohbot.
“It is so similar; there can be a little difference on one side or the other. It depends on the project each year,” Bohbot told ESPN. “It doesn’t seem to have affected the currency’s fate each year.”
Great interest in tossing a coin
Betting on heads or tails is foolish, of course, and the size of most bets reflects that. Most, but not all.
As crazy as it sounds, five-digit heads or tails are practically a regular occurrence. And there were even bigger ones.
Art Mantis, who spent more than 40 years managing sports betting in Las Vegas, remembers one of his big bets at the old Hilton betting $ 100,000 on the coin, only to return a few hours later to bet on the other side for $ 200,000.
“He said he changed his mind,” recalled maintain, now vice president of Station Casinos. “The change worked for him that day.”
Take it? Change. The humor of the bookmakers is simply the best.
The number of the bet on the heads or tails is one of the first that the cashiers working in the betting windows for the Super Bowl memorize. They need the number to enter the bet on the computer system, something they do repeatedly on the coin. The coin tosser rarely knows the bet number, says Sharapan.
In his time working at the Super Bowl Sunday betting windows, Sharapan heard all sorts of theories of coin punters, from the supposedly heavier side of the tail, to the grass surfaces that produce more heads than grass because of the extra jump. Nothing, however, is cited as the reason behind a heads or tails bet more than “tails never fail”.
“We used to draw a line between me and the boy or girl beside me at the counter about how many times we would hear ‘crown never fails’ during a shift,” said Sharapan. “We would keep a score sheet behind the counter to maintain control. We would set the line at 18.5. I would always go over.”
To irritate his coworkers and win his bet, Sharapan asked clients who bet on heads or tails if they had heard of that old saying about tails. Inevitably, the gambler would miss out: “crown never fails”.
By the way, sometimes it fails. In the 54 Super Bowls, the heads or tails hit 25 times.
By the way, coin bets are not just an American disaster. It is popular abroad as well.
“It has always been a popular prop bet, whether in the United States or abroad,” said Andrew Mannino, senior analyst at PointsBet, a long-time Australian bookmaker that has entered the American market in recent years.
Bookmakers don’t know exactly what drives interest in betting heads and tails, and they really don’t care. After all, it’s nice to be able to charge five cents on a 50-50 bet.
Last year, more money – a few hundred thousand dollars – was bet on the heads or tails than any other prop bet in William Hill US books. With the company operating in several other states this year, coin flip bets are expected to increase significantly this year.
“Last year, we needed ‘crown never fails’ and we got the result we wanted,” said Adam Pullen, assistant director of trading at William Hill US.
FanDuel was not so lucky last year and paid $ 200,000 in bets at the end before the game even started. There was a lot of money in the face, of course, but not as much as I was wearing a crown, and the $ 200,000 payout gives an idea of how much is being bet on the coin.
“Every year I am surprised by the dollars,” said Nick Bogdanovich, commercial director at William Hill US. “They just hit hard. I am totally amazed each year.”