For two glorious weeks every year, we think about the color of an NFL team’s Gatorade.
The Gatorade bath color and coin toss are among the two most popular Super Bowl prop bets every year at BetMGM. You might not bet heads or tails on that Titans vs. Colts game in October, but it becomes a must-bet event for Super Bowl Sunday.
Prop betting used to be popular for Super Bowls and rare for all but the biggest NFL regular-season and even playoff games. Now most sportsbooks like BetMGM offer a huge menu of props for every NFL game, and every game in the NBA, MLB and NHL too. But there’s still something special about the Super Bowl props.
Here are some of the most interesting and popular early props offered by BetMGM for Super Bowl LIX:
The coin toss
The beauty of the coin toss is there’s never a betting favorite.
People prefer tails though. At BetMGM, 53% of the money bet on the coin toss already is on tails. The history says that tails has come up 30 times and heads has come up 28 times in the first 58 Super Bowl coin tosses.
Does that mean heads is due? Or that tails is clearly dominating the race? It probably just means that this year’s coin toss is a 50/50 proposition, and that it will once again be among the more popular bets for the game.
The Gatorade color
What color will the Gatorade be that gets dumped on the winning coach? Purple took over as the favorite after some action on it, moving from +350 to +250. That actually happened.
Here are the odds:
Purple +250
Yellow/green/lime +300
Red/pink +350
Orange +400
Blue +650
Clear/water +900
No Gatorade bath +2500
After yellow/green/lime was dumped on Eagles coach Nick Sirianni at the end of the NFC championship game, that color has gotten the most bets in the early action on the prop. At BetMGM, 26% of the bets made on the Gatorade color was on yellow/green/lime. Adjust accordingly.
Patrick Mahomes props
There are plenty of traditional props on the players in Super Bowl LIX (and the basic betting lines of Chiefs -1.5 and the over/under of 49.5). Patrick Mahomes props are plentiful, of course.
The passing yards for Mahomes is 252.5, passing touchdowns is 1.5 (with -175 odds on the over), interceptions at 0.5, completions at 24.5 and rushing yards at 40.5, among other props. The rushing yards got a big bump from the opening number of 28.5. The three most popular Mahomes props are over 11.5 for longest rush, over 35.5 as the longest completion and over 5.5 rushing attempts. All three of those overs have gotten 98% of the bets early on. Mahomes over 5.5 rushing attempts is a top-five most popular bet already for Super Bowl props.
Saquon Barkley props
It should be no surprise that Barkley is a popular figure for Super Bowl prop bettors
Barkley’s rushing total is 113.5, which is significantly less than his regular season average of 125.3. His rushing attempts is 21.5, longest rush is 23.5 and the odds of him scoring a touchdown are a whopping -200 (bet $200 to win $100).
Bettors are thinking Barkley will get a lot of action during the Super Bowl. The third and fourth most popular props, in terms of bets, are Barkley over 113.5 rushing yards and over 23.5 yards for his longest rush.
The 2 most popular player props
A lot of bets will come in at BetMGM between now and kickoff, but the two most popular prop bets early on are a bit of a surprise.
The most popular prop, in terms of number of bets, is Eagles tight end Dallas Goedert over 48.5 receiving yards. He had more than 48.5 yards in just six of his 13 games this season, including playoffs. Yet, 99% of the bets on Goedert’s total are on the over.
The second-most popular prop is on Chiefs rookie receiver Xavier Worthy’s rushing yards. The over of 4.5 rushing yards has 99% of the bets. Bettors assume Worthy will get at least one carry on an end around or reverse.
