With the launch of the Super Bowl just minutes away, the scene in the back room of the Las Vegas sports book is intense.
Bookmakers look at their computers and an executive walks back and forth, already sweating his Sunday suit. Bets are pouring in, millions of dollars are at stake. It is a non-stop action.
Suddenly, the camera goes silent and everyone stops to watch TV. Referees, team captains and the honorary coin gather in the middle of the field. In the book of bets, there is a sigh of anticipation as the coin is tossed into the air. Heads or tails to determine which team gets the ball first – and who gets to keep the money wagered on the coin.
The coin turns upside down, jumps on the field and sits on its heads. The stressed boss quickly asks, “How did we do?”
An employee hastily notes the bets, takes a deep breath and replies with horror: “I just lost $ 38,000. We are blocked by 38 dimes and the game has not even started “.
The boss asks another question: “What the f —?”
The flip of the Super Bowl coin can be the biggest of two seconds in sports betting, and the amount of money that changes hands is ridiculous. Out of the hundreds of betting options on the Super Bowl, from the color of the sports drink thrown on the winning coach to whom the MVP thanks first in his acceptance speech, more money goes on his head or tail than any of them.
“You put in all this work to get all these props out, come with cross-country sports and everything,” said Dave Sharapan, a Las Vegas bookmaker. “And the coin thruster is the best bet of all props, every year.”
Capete vs. tails
The Super Bowl coin flip has been on the blackboard at Las Vegas sports books for decades. Heads or tails, which team will win the throw and decide which team to take the ball, play defense or postpone in the second half – you can bet them all. And a lot of people do, despite the fact that they have been charged up by five cents per dollar, worth what is essentially a 50-50 proposal. (This study from Stanford University used the angular momentum vector to show that an overturned, hand-held coin tends to land the same way it started. But the Super Bowl coin lands on the ground and often bounces, and in addition , what does Stanford do, you know, anyway?)
Vince Bohbot, on the other hand, knows all about the real currency used for the Super Bowl. Bohbot is executive vice president at The Highland Mint in Melbourne, Florida. In the last 28 Super Bowls, The Highland Mint has made the coin for the initial launch.
In the 1990s, the coins were made of pure silver. Now, with the price of silver sinking, the coins are plated with silver and selective plating with 24-carat gold. The coins are similar in size to a silver dollar. They weigh about an ounce and have a diameter of 33 millimeters.
This year’s coin features ocean 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 part with the Lombardi Trophy is designated heads. Both sides weigh practically the same, according to Bohbot.
“It’s so close; there might be a minute difference on one side or the other. It depends on the design every year,” Bohbot told ESPN. “It doesn’t seem to have affected where the currency lands every year.”
Massive interest in overturning a coin
Coin betting is, of course, stupid, and the size of most bets reflects this. Most, but not all.
As crazy as it may sound, five-digit bets on the coin are practically a common occurrence. And they were even bigger.
Art Manteris, who has spent more than 40 years driving sports books in Las Vegas, remembers one of his high-profile roles at the old Hilton, betting $ 100,000 on the coin, only to return just a few hours later to bet the other side for $ 200,000.
“He said he changed his mind,” said Manteris, now vice president at Station Casinos. “The change worked for him that day.”
Take him? Change. The humor of the bookmaker is the best.
The betting number on the coin thruster is one of the first to remember cashiers working with Super Bowl betting windows. They need the number to enter the bet into the computer system, which they do repeatedly on the coin flip. Coin betting rarely knows the number of the bet, says Sharapan.
At the time he was working on the betting windows in Super Bowl Sunday, Sharapan heard all sorts of theories from coin bettors, from the tail end supposed to be heavier, to turf surfaces that produce more heads than grass from cause of the additional jump. Nothing, however, is cited as a reason behind a monetary bet other than “queues never fail.”
“I used to draw a line between myself and the guy or the girl next to me at the counter whenever I heard that ‘the queues never fail’ during a change,” Sharapan said. “I would keep a spreadsheet behind the counter to keep track. I would set the line at 18.5. I would always go over.”
To irritate his colleagues and win his bet, Sharapan asked customers who bet the coin if they had ever heard of that old saying about queues. Inevitably, the gambler would break out, “the queues never fail.”
By the way, the queues sometimes fail. In the 54 Super Bowls, tossing the coin drew heads 25 times.
By the way, coin betting is not just an American disaster. It is also popular abroad.
“It’s always been a popular bet, whether it’s in the US or abroad,” said Andrew Mannino, a senior analyst for PointsBet, a longtime Australian bookmaker that has joined the US market in recent years.
Bookmakers do not know exactly what determines the interest in betting on the currency and do not really care. In the end, it’s nice to be able to charge a five-cent vig on a 50-50 bet.
Last year, more money – a few hundred thousand dollars – was bet on the coin than any other bet on William Hill cards in the US. With the company operating in several states this year, currency betting is expected to increase significantly this year.
“Last year, we needed ‘queues never fail’ and we got the result we wanted,” said Adam Pullen, assistant director of trading for William Hill USA.
FanDuel was not as lucky last year and paid $ 200,000 in queue bets before the match began. There was enough money on your head, of course, not as much as you ride with your tails, and paying $ 200,000 gives you an idea of how much you bet on a coin.
“I’m amazed at the dollars every year,” said Nick Bogdanovich, chief trading officer for William Hill USA. “They were just beating him. I’m completely amazed every year.”