- The Kansas City Chiefs are favored by 3.5 points in the Super Bowl.
- The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were also 3.5 point underdogs to the Green Bay Packers.
- Sportsbooks have huge liabilities on the Buccaneers.
LAS VEGAS - The Super Bowl lines are up at all of the major online sportsbooks, and have started to coalesce. The Kansas City Chiefs are 3.5 point favorites at even odds, while the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are +3.5 with -120 odds.
The shading on the line indicates that this is not a final settling place, or at least, not a perfect one.
The line is effectively halfway in between Chiefs -3.0 and Chiefs -3.5.
However, it is widely believed that the Chiefs are by far the best team in the NFL, and this raises one major question:
Why is it that the Chiefs, if they are so good, are only favored to this degree?
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were underdogs against both the New Orleans Saints and the Green Bay Packers.
The Packers had a -3.5 spread over the Bucs, the same as the Chiefs do.
Are we expected to believe that the Packers would have had even odds against the Chiefs in the Super Bowl?
Well, one thing that stuck out in researching the sportsbooks is that many online betting apps have already seen large volumes of wagers on the Chiefs.
“On the whole, the bets have swung massively in Kansas City’s favor with 76% of the bets and 80% of the money coming in on the side of the Chiefs.”
Darren Rovell at The Action Network reported similar findings, noting that that:
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“BetMGM and DraftKings each reported most of the early wagers were on the Chiefs. At BetMGM, 76 percent of bets and 80 percent of the money are on Kansas City. DraftKings reported similar numbers with 77 percent of bets and 81 percent of money on the defending Super Bowl champions."
At PointsBet, it was even more drastic. "Eighty-two percent of bets and 90 percent of the money is on Kansas City.“
So why are the odds not moving?
Well, it seems that the sportsbooks have huge outstanding liabilities on the Buccaneers.
Back in April, Rovell reported that sportsbooks have 10 times the liability on the Buccaneers to win the Super Bowl as they do on any other team.
This large discrepancy narrowed down somewhat, but the Bucs were sitting at +1600 to win the Super Bowl before Rob Gronkowski joined the team.
They moved to around +1200 in the aftermath, and stayed there for a while, leaving plenty of time for the sportsbooks to become exposed by savvy NFL betting players.
KC, on the other hand, has been the odds on favorite to win the Super Bowl for more or less the entire year.
Both of these teams could present liabilities to the sportsbooks, but the Bucs present a lot more, with BetMGM claiming that they have twice as much liability on the Bucs.
This could be a reason for the odds remaining static - the sportsbooks might be balancing out their Bucs futures liabilities with soft lines on their opponents in the Super Bowl.
Bettors should stay apprised of moves like this, and keep track of sportsbook liabilities, as they could influence odds in the future.
Maxwell joined the USAOnlineSportsbooks team in 2019. He focuses on creating sports betting content that informs and educates. He focuses on the NBA, the NFL, College Football and Basketball, and whatever else comes across his desk.
