A faithful reader wrote to tell me he was especially pleased with how the Super Bowl went on Sunday. He was pulling for Cincinnati, mind you. He loved the Joe Burrow story, figured the Bengals were overdue to finally win a championship, and placed a couple of wagers on the Bengals the game using the DraftKings app.
He bet the Bengals at +4.5 points before the game. Then, after the Rams took an early lead on Sunday the reader doubled down using the live in-game wagering feature and got Cincinnati at a whopping +9.5 points.
Final: Rams 23, Bengals 20.
The reader won both of those wagers, of course.
Also, he happened to have Rams star wide receiver Cooper Kupp to win the MVP award. Kupp caught the game-winning touchdown, won the hardware and the bet paid 6-to-1. In all, the reader -- a 70-something retiree -- reported that he placed 15 modest-sized bets on the game and won 11 of them.
His profit: $312.
But it’s what happened on the way there that I was most interested in. Because the reader admitted that he abandoned traditional habits and stopped rooting for the Bengals as the game was starting to wind down. He’s a die-hard sports fan, who like a lot of Oregonians can now bet legally on sporting events, and was experiencing something fairly new during this Super Bowl. He figured late in the game that he would cash the two (+4.5 points and +9.5 points) wagers. So instead of rooting for the Bengals to win he jumped sides and found himself focused instead on what Kupp needed to do to win the MVP award.
The reader had a question for us: “I’m wondering... if I’m alone.”
I assured him he is not.
Not far away in my in-box, in fact, was a note from Geoff in Tualatin, who remarked, “Sports betting makes sports way more interesting.” He checked in during the game and happened to need Rams’ quarterback Matthew Stafford to throw two interceptions (won it) and for Burrow to be sacked at least five times (won it, too).
Also, there was Brian, who bet $100 that both Stafford and Burrow would throw for at least 250 yards (got those) and that both teams would score 25+ points. He had 4.5-to-1 odds on that last part, which is why Brian was rooting in the closing seconds for the Bengals to kick a game-tying field goal that would have sent the game to overtime, tied 23-23.
Once there, he’d need a field goal by the team that won the opening toss, followed by a field goal by the opposing team. That would have left the game tied at 26-26 and made him a winner even as the game would have then been in sudden-death mode. I’m only pointing this out because it’s evident from my in-box and the series of text messages I received from friends during the game that we’ve all lost our minds and are apparently no longer rooting like traditional sports fans.
Not judging here. Just making a casual observation. But I did note that had the game gone to overtime, there was money riding on that, too. It would have paid some merry soul 9.5-to-1 just for being there.
I reached out to the Oregon Lottery on Monday to see how the Super Bowl went on its end. A little more than a year ago the entity launched Scoreboard, which allowed residents in the geographical footprint of our state lines to place wagers. A few weeks ago, the Oregon Lottery turned over all operations of the sports-wagering operation to DraftKings, which has been at this for a lot longer and in a bunch of different states.
A spokesperson for the lottery told me they’re still getting data from DraftKings but, “I can share with you that we had over 250,000 bets this year versus 150,000 last year.”
That’s a 66 percent increase on number of wagers, folks. Some of that may have to do with the fact that the Scoreboard app felt cumbersome vs. the more established and smooth DraftKings app. I’ll share more data when the lottery updates me, but I’m left wondering if the growth we’re seeing here is going to permanently change how we watch games in our state.
More fun?
Less traditional loyalty to teams and more loyalty to your wagers?
Decide for yourself how much you liked how it felt.
Jay Kornegay runs the WestGate Superbook in Las Vegas. He told me last week that 70 percent of the tickets wagered on Sunday’s game were bet on Bengals. The largest wager he took in the run-up to the game was a $150,000 wager on the Bengals +4.5 points. The guy walked in with a duffel bag and placed the bet.
“America loves watching football, they love betting football and they especially like that one event that happens at the end of the year,” Kornegay said.
In Oregon, the Super Bowl is our singular big sports-wagering event. Our state legislature is considering a bill that would lift the current ban on betting on college athletics. I wonder what it would mean for the NCAA Tournament, because Kornegay said the Super Bowl and March Madness run neck-and-neck in his world, albeit with far different demographics.
“The Super Bowl is a much more mature, older crowd,” Kornegay said. “March Madness? It’s a frat party. It’s a different clientele. We’ve got to store up on light beer, bacon and burgers.”
Sounds like at least one faithful reader is hooked. I’ll bet (no pun intended) that many of you have noticed your habits shifting, too. I’m not sure all of this is good or bad. Decide for yourself, and be responsible for crying out loud. But it feels like it wasn’t just the Rams or Bengals that a lot of Oregonians were rooting for on Sunday.
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Email: John@JohnCanzano.com
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