Whether you’re a gambler or not, you’re familar with the basic betting options that come with Australian sports – margins, line, first try scorers or goalkickers, perhaps a Norm Smith or Clive Churchill Medallist in the biggest games of the year – but the Super Bowl takes it to another level.
In addition to countless markets on how many yards each player will make, if they’ll score, who will win the MVP award and many others, there’s always a host of novelty prop bets which themselves make up a multi-million dollar industry each year.
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Here’s some of the silliest and strangest things you can bet on for this year’s Super Bowl:
The Gatorade colour
The coach getting dunked with the celebratory Gatorade bath is a time-honoured tradition at the end of the game, and one that people love betting on.
On the Las Vegas sportsbooks, orange is $2.30, clear is $2.75, green/yellow is $4.00, blue is $6.00, red $10, and purple $12.
Given blue has won two of the last three years – including Tampa Bay’s win in 2021 – that’s an enticing option.
The national anthem
Country singer Mickey Guyton will perform the anthem this year, with the line of her performance sitting at 98 seconds.
The analysis that goes into this market is always great – hardcore gamblers scour the internet for any footage of that year’s singer performing the anthem at a different event (Guyton, for the record, performed the song in 83 seconds at an event last year).
You can also get massive odds of $10 that she’ll forget a word to the song, as well as a market on what colour her outfit will be.
The halftime show
The quintet of Mary J. Blige, Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, and Kendrick Lamar will perform this year – and pretty much every aspect of it can be wagered on.
You can bet who will perform first (Dr Dre is a $2.50 favourite), what the first song will be (California Love, the Tupac Shakur song that features Dr Dre, is $3 while Dre’s The Next Episode is next-favourite at $4.75), as well as each respective performer’s first song, irrespective of when they appear. Eminem, for example, has Lose Yourself as a short favourite for his catalogue.
And of course, you can get $10.50 odds of their being a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ like there was in 2004 when Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake performed together.
The coin toss
The dumbest bet you will ever make – unlike any other aspects of the game which could, theoretically, be influenced by knowledge of the game, or insider info into either the halftime show or the Gatorade options, betting on the coin toss is a straight up 50/50 chance.
The problem here is that sportsbooks will give you odds of either $1.90 or $1.95, meaning that every time you make this bet, you’re losing money no matter how sharp you are.