In the run-up to this year’s Super Bowl between the Rams and the Bengals, which takes place in Inglewood, California, on the 13th February, our betting experts are here to run you through everything you need to know about how to bet on the Super Bowl.
There are two key questions that you’re going to need to answer before Super Bowl 56:
- LA Rams or Cincinnati Bengals?
- Heads or Tails?
Over the years, the Super Bowl Coin Toss has become one of the most fun, and popular, props to bet on, as it gets the action started on the biggest day in the NFL.
It’s literally a 50/50 chance, but you can over analyse this prop by looking back at the history, the streaks of heads and tails and how many times each side of the coin has come up in the 55 years of the Super Bowl.
With 10 days until the big day, 52% of bets are on tails whereas 48% are on heads and bizarrely, the Super Bowl coin flip may be the greatest two seconds in sports betting, and the amount of money that changes hands on it is ludicrous.
Out of the thousands of betting options on the Super Bowl, from the colour of sports drink dumped on the winning coach to whom the MVP thanks first in his acceptance speech, more money is riding on heads or tails than any of them.
Betting on the coin flip is silly, and the size of most wagers reflects that. Most, but not all. And as mad as it may sound, five-figure bets on the coin flip are practically a regular occurrence.
And even bigger bets than that. Last year saw a British Super Bowl fan put a £100,000 bet on the coin flip; and thankfully that bet worked well for him as he cashed in £200,000.
Tails always tend to be the more popular out of the two as ‘tails never fails’ which means that most bookmakers are hoping for heads to minimise their losses.
However, based on recent history, winning the coin toss in the Super Bowl does not end well for that team and the loser of the coin toss has won the previous seven Super Bowls – only last year, the Kansas City Chiefs won the coin toss by calling heads, but they went on to lose the game to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
In fact, the winner of the coin toss has lost the Super Bowl 31 times.
- Heads: 26 times (47.3%)
- Tails: 29 times (52.7%)
And while winning the coin toss might be a bad omen for a team fighting to win the Super Bowl, does a team have better luck with heads or with tails?
Like the tote board next to the roulette wheel that shows the results of previous spins, here are the coin toss results for previous Super Bowls: so for those keeping score at home, the coin flip has landed on tails 29 times (52.7%) and on heads 26 times (47.3%). So maybe the old phrase, “tails never fails,” is sort of true…
Seattle Seahawks back in 2014 are the last team to win the toss and the Super Bowl.
