Behind The Book

As sports betting has nearly doubled in the past decade, America has developed a love affair with prop bets

- Justin Rohrlich

As former President George H. W. Bush looked on, referee Carl Cheffers turned to New England Patriots wide receiver Matthew Slater. “Captain, what is your choice?” he asked.

Slater, a six-time Pro Bowl selection, has called heads every time he has participated in a coin toss for the past six years. Super Bowl LI was no different. Heads it was. Cheffers, playing in his first NFL championship, handed a silver-plated brass coin to President Bush, who flipped it into the air.

Tails.

Heads had come up 24 times in the 50 prior Super Bowls; tails landed 26—a virtual dead heat. This year, gamblers in Nevada wagered more than $138.5 million on the Super Bowl, according to figures released by the Nevada Gaming Control Board, more than ever before. At Caesars Palace, bettors risked about $100,000 on the coin toss. Of that, 62 percent of the money was on heads. Thus, tails was a substantial win for the house.

At Caesars, NFL games account for roughly three quarters of sports-book business. “We get a ton of high-end action; this is a high-end resort,” says Frank Kunovic, director of specialty games for Caesars, Harris, and Rio. “We have people betting six figures all the time.”

The money wagered at Nevada sports books has more than quadrupled over the past three decades, and they are projected to bring in more than $5 billion in bets in 2017—up from $2.7 billion in 2006. “People can’t get enough of it,” legendary Las Vegas bookmaker Jimmy Vaccaro told the Las Vegas Review-Journal last year. And as the dollar amounts have increased, so have the ways in which gamblers can spend them.