Super Bowl LVII is the biggest “public” betting event on the calendar for sportsbooks, which means a wave of first-time and recreation bettors driving the action, rather than wise guys and professional gamblers.
That influx of public money has many people looking to risk a little to win a lot with their Super Bowl picks. That’s the reason a bet like a “safety being the first score” of the Big Game is now sitting around +4,000 odds compared to the +7,500 it used to have a decade ago.
You see, bookmakers took a bath on that specific prop not once but twice in recent years, with Super Bowl XLVI and Super Bowl XLVIII both having a safety as the opening score of the game. Those long-shot bets took a good chunk out of the books’ p…