Saints Super Bowl Upset Equals Win For Online Sportsbooks & Vegas

NFL News - February 8th, 2010 - Written by John Ritter

Bourbon Street was crawling with fans after New Orleans won it's first NFL championship, but their cheers may have been drowned out by the celebration by Las Vegas Casinos who just raked in a huge payday because of the upset.

The Super Bowl drew an American television record 106-million viewers this year, and with it, drew a record Super Bowl Betting crowd.

It is predicted that over 278,000 gamblers came to Vegas and bet around $90 million on the Super Bowl, and several billions more were wagered in offshore online casinos. The previous Super Bowl record was about $96 million.

And when the Saints upset the Colts, beating the spread and keeping the game under, Las Vegas made buckets of money. Nearly 80-percent of bettors went with the over, and about 65-percent went with Indianapolis when the lines closed.

"I think the outcome was pretty good," Terry Cox, director of the Peppermill Resort Spa and Casino, said. "The public tends to bet the favorite (Colts by 5 points) and the over (total points scored by both teams). The under helped us. There was a lot of money on the over.

"By and large, I think most places had a fair win."

Even more money was made on prop bet wagers because almost 75-percent of bettors picked "yes" on yes/no props and "over" on over/unders, said Las Vegas Hilton SuperBook director Jay Kornegay. Most of those prop bets went "no" and "under".

"No one wants to come all the way to Las Vegas to root for something not to happen," Kornegay said.

New Orleans drew the emotional crowd who was hoping the Saints would complete the turnaround after suffering through Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Indianapolis got the football purests who wanted to see Peyton Manning cement himself into football history as possibly the greatest NFL quarterback of all-time.

With such a cult following, those who bet with the heart went with New Orleans, while those who went with the head usually took Indianapolis. Either way, they bet. A lot.

"Super Bowl 44 betting is likely to result in the most traffic to date in Gambling911.com's near 10-year history," Senior Editor, Payton O'Brien, projected on Monday.

That's how Vegas really rolls in the dough, playing on bettors knee-jerk reactions after both the Colts and Saints scored more than 30 points in both conference playoff games.

According to NFL Betting lines, the early line on the game two weeks ago pitted Indianapolis as a paper-thin 2 1/2-point favorite, but that spread grew to as much as six when gamblers poured their support for the Colts.

In all, betting on the game increased by 14-percent from last year.

One of the best documented cases of squandering cash on the game was Phil Ivey's disastrous flop (pun most-certainly intended). Gambling911 reported that the poker star, and current no.1 player in the world, went in together with gambler Billy Waters for $2 million on a line bet on Indianapolis. Other million dollar gambles on the Colts were also reported, but have yet to be verified.

"We had good crowds in the books and in the ballroom parties," Cox continued. "The big story of day was that it was a great matchup this year, with a lot of interest from the public on both sides."