Gatorade Color, Coin Toss And ‘Scorigami’ Among The Oddest Legal Wagers You Can Make This Year

Topline

More Americans than ever will be able to bet on the Super Bowl this year, and their options will go far beyond the point spread, with everything from the opening coin toss to the color of the winning coach’s traditional game-ending Gatorade bath on the table.

Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid gets gatorade poured on him after winning Super Bowl LIV on … [+] February 2, 2020 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Photo by Rich Graessle/PPI/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Key Facts

Perhaps the most common novelty bet is the coin toss result—Caesars Sportsbook appears to have the best odds of any major betting platform, at -101 (meaning a $101 wager must be placed to profit $100, resulting in a $201 payout).

Bettors might find value in guessing the color of the Gatorade bath, where yellow/green are the favorites, but at +165 odds on DraftKings Sportsbook (meaning a winning $100 bet would result in a $165 profit, for a $265 payout), followed by orange at +300 and blue at +400, while other colors have longer odds.

An octopus sighting—in football terms, a player scoring both a touchdown and a two point conversion on the same drive—has +1400 odds on DraftKings Sportsbook.

Players wearing numbers between 80 and 99 have the best chance of scoring the first touchdown, according to Caesars, which lists +330 odds for players in that group to get in the endzone first, followed by +400 odds for jersey numbers 11-14, along with 1-5.

The game ending in a “Scorigami”—a score that’s never been recorded before in an NFL game—would deliver a big profit for some bettors, with DraftKings offering +2000 odds for one to happen, while the odds are -10000 against it happening.

The results of a Mexican soccer game could even make a difference for some bettors, since Caesars is offering a cross-sport prop bet asking whether there will be more goals in the Toluca-Cruz Azul match on Sunday or touchdowns in the first half of the Super Bowl (both have odds of -115).

What To Watch For

The winning coach has been doused in blue gatorade for two years in a row, but Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid—who is returning to the Super Bowl this year to face off against the Philadelphia Eagles—bathed in orange gatorade when the Chiefs won Super Bowl LIV in 2020.

Tangent

The Eagles are the odds-on favorites to defeat the Chiefs, with most major sportsbooks having them favored by 1.5 points. The Eagles are -125 on the money line, while the Chiefs are +105.

Key Background

Sports betting is now legal in 33 states and the District of Columbia, according to the American Gaming Association—up from 30 at the time of last year’s Super Bowl—and it’s legal in most of those states to bet using mobile devices. An additional three states—Maine, Nebraska and Florida—have passed laws legalizing sports betting, but sportsbooks have not been allowed to launch yet. Legalization has taken place swiftly around the country since a May 2018 Supreme Court ruling struck down a 1992 federal law that primarily restricted sports betting to Las Vegas, with Justice Samuel Alito writing in the 6-3 majority opinion: “The legalization of sports gambling requires an important policy choice, but the choice is not ours to make.”

Big Number

$1 million. That’s how much someone bet on the Philadelphia Eagles to win the game at BetMGM Sportsbook—the largest wager so far. The bet had odds of -125, meaning the gambler will profit $800,000 if the Eagles pull off the win. Houston furniture store owner Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale has not placed a bet on the game yet, after he lost $9.5 million in record-setting bets last year. McIngvale also whiffed on a $2 million bet last month for the Dallas Cowboys to beat the San Francisco 49ers in the divisional playoffs. McIngvale probably isn’t at risk of going broke, though: His stores usually run promotional deals that promise full refunds on purchases if his massive wagers go his way, so even when he loses at the sportsbook, he still gets to pocket millions of dollars from furniture sales instead of giving it back to customers.

Surprising Fact

Several other strange bets—like a power outage during the Super Bowl and how many hot dogs will be sold during the game—have also received attention, but many of the most exotic odds are being offered by overseas sportsbooks. It’s illegal in the U.S. to make bets through overseas books.