Super Bowl Betting vs. US Election Betting

It’s safe to assume that Super Bowl 55 will be the biggest event of 2021 for sports bettors in the United States. While betting interest in some other sporting events, such as the FIFA World Cup, may compare to the Super Bowl on a global scale, nothing touches the NFL’s championship game when it comes to sports betting in the US.

Every year, billions of dollars are wagered on the Super Bowl in some form or fashion. While most of the money that changes hands is tied to the result of the game itself, that is far from the only way to wager on the action. Plenty of non-football fans can bet on things like the length of the pregame national anthem, or what color Gatorade will be dumped over the winning coach.

Super Bowl 55 is also unique in that it comes on the heels of another major betting event in the US. Just a couple of months ago, hundreds of millions of dollars were wagered on the American presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. While football betting and political betting are different in many ways, there are also some comparisons to be drawn between the two.

How Much Money Was Wagered on the 2020 Election?

Nothing trumps the popularity of football in the United States. Super Bowl Sunday has become an unofficial holiday on the American calendar over the years. Hundreds of millions of people tune in every year to watch the game for a variety of reasons. You don’t even have to be a fan of the sport to enjoy the festivities.

Politics is obviously a different animal entirely. While Super Bowl betting has become an industry of its own over the past few decades, there hasn’t been nearly as much interest in betting on politics. That’s likely due in part to the fact that land-based sportsbooks are legally prohibited from accepting bets on American politics in the US. Betting on American politics has become a much more popular industry overseas and at sites run by offshore operators, however.

While the 2016 election between Trump and Hillary Clinton set new records for political wagering, it paled in comparison to the amount of betting interest that was generated this past year. In fact, the highly-anticipated 2020 election between Biden and Trump became the single biggest betting event of all-time at Betfair, one of the more renowned betting operators in the UK. Bettors wagered nearly $500 million at Betfair Exchange on the 2020 election, which beat the previous record of $257 million that had been set by the aforementioned 2016 election.

Betfair took in $146 million in handle from the Brexit referendum and another $66 million for the boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor in 2018. The 2018 World Cup Final between France and Croatia attracted $36 million worth of bets at Betfair. One can only imagine how much money would be wagered on the election in the US if it were actually legal to do so in the States.

What About the Super Bowl?

While they can’t wager on the US election, Americans are more than happy to make up for that by betting as much as they possibly can on the Super Bowl. Last year, Americans wagered nearly $7 billion on Super Bowl 54 between the Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers. Nearly $155 million of that was wagered at sportsbooks across Nevada, which is the country’s biggest sports betting market.

The American Gaming Association estimated that about 26 million Americans bet in some way on Super Bowl 54. About four million of those people placed a bet at a land-based sportsbook, while another five million did so over the internet. The vast majority of bettors placed their bets with a bookie or in a casual setting with friends or family. Super Bowl Squares, for example, is a very popular way for people to bet on the game without patronizing an actual sportsbook.

Nevada’s sportsbooks profited nearly $19 million from the $155 million that was wagered on last year’s game. That was the second-biggest win for Nevada sportsbooks on a Super Bowl in the last 30 years, according to Forbes. In fact, profiting on the Super Bowl is nothing new for Nevada sportsbooks. The state’s Gaming Control Board says Nevada casinos have profited in 28 of the last 30 NFL title games.

Clearly, the amount wagered on the 2020 election pales in comparison to the amount bet on the Super Bowl. That’s due in large part to the fact that the American Gaming Association’s estimation includes money wagered illegally. BetOnline, one of the most popular offshore betting sites for American players, said late last year that the site took in more bets on the 2020 election than it did on Super Bowl 54.

We can expect another betting record to be set ahead of Super Bowl 55. With more and more states having opened up their own legal and regulated sports betting markets over the last year, there should be more money wagered on this game than any before it.

Why Was the 2020 Election A Popular Betting Event?

While the presidency has been around since the 1700s, betting on election results is a fairly new phenomenon in the United States. British bookmakers have been accepting bets on American politics for decades, but the advent of the internet has clearly sent the industry’s popularity into a new stratosphere in recent years.

Because American sportsbooks aren’t allowed to take bets on the election, Americans would have had to travel overseas if they wanted to place legal bets on political outcomes in the past.

Nowadays, though, Americans can do so without having to leave their house. The easy accessibility of online political betting sites like BetOnline, MyBookie, and Bovada means it has never been easier to wager on politics in the US.

Don’t underestimate the importance of the cult of personality, either. Donald Trump was far from an ordinary politician. His rise from business mogul to reality TV star to president is something we’ve never seen before. Trump wasn’t given much of a chance to actually beat Clinton in 2016. His upset triumph shocked political pundits and political betting sites alike. Every single bookmaker had Clinton pegged as a sizable favorite to beat Trump in 2016, and political polls predicted the same.

Nearly 70 percent of all bets placed on the 2016 election at William Hill were placed on Trump as an underdog. The vast majority of those bets were small in dollar amount, but the sheer number of them added up to quite a bit. Bookmakers got absolutely crushed as a result of Trump’s shocking win.

So, it’s safe to assume that many bettors were looking to cash-in again last year with Trump heading into another election as an underdog. While the odds weren’t quite as skewed against him this time around, most political betting sites gave Biden about a 66 percent chance at


unseating Trump.

Trump paid off as a significant plus-money ‘dog four years ago, so who was to say he couldn’t pull off another win in 2020?

Trump is a massively divisive figure, as well. He has retained a loyal base of avid supporters that would never turn on him, and it’s fair to assume that plenty of them were happy to wager on his chances of winning re-election despite the long odds. On the flip side, plenty of others surely relished in the opportunity to bet against his chances of winning another four-year term in the White House.

Super Bowl and Election Prop Betting

Most people bet on whichever team they think will win the Super Bowl. The same can be said of the election. However, part of the intrigue when it comes to betting on both events comes from the ancillary wagers you can place.

Prop betting has gone hand-in-hand with the Super Bowl for years. In fact, the Super Bowl is a major reason for prop betting’s popularity in the first place.

The Bears had occasionally used Perry as a short-yardage running back during the regular season, and there was plenty of speculation around the possibility of Perry plunging into the end zone in the Super Bowl. Perry did wind up doing just that at 20-1 odds, which essentially started the Super Bowl prop betting craze.

As mentioned previously, betting sites and land-based sportsbooks now accept countless prop bets ahead of the Super Bowl every year. You can wager on things like whether Patrick Mahomes or Tom Brady will throw the first touchdown pass in the game. You can bet on what color shirt The Weeknd will be wearing when he performs at halftime. You can even put money on whether the opening coin toss will land on heads or tails.

Betting sites also offered plenty of prop betting options for last year’s presidential election. You could bet the over/under on total number of votes either candidate would receive, for example. Biden’s over/under was set at 79.5 million votes, while Trump’s was set at 69.5.

The “over” on both candidates would have cashed, as last year’s election shattered the previous records for turnout.

You could wager on whether the winner of the popular vote would also win the Electoral College. You could wager on Trump winning every state he won back in 2016. You could bet on how many Senate seats Democrats would win. Prop betting was a huge part of what turned the 2020 presidential election into such a massively popular betting event worldwide.

US Presidential Election Odds Are Notoriously Volatile

These days, NFL betting markets are incredibly sharp. Gambling on football is a huge industry in and of itself. So, it’s vital that all football betting sites and land-based sportsbooks cover themselves as well as they possibly can. As a result, you are unlikely to find drastically different odds on the Super Bowl from one site to another. While there may be a few discrepancies here and there, NFL odds are generally fairly aligned around the industry.

The same cannot be said of political betting markets. Not by a long shot. While Biden was a consensus favorite over Trump by the time Election Day rolled around, that was hardly the case over the course of the entire election cycle. In fact, Trump was a heavy minus-money favorite to win re-election for the vast majority of his first and only term in office.

Incumbents are generally favored to win re-election. While Trump was never the most popular POTUS during his term, most betting sites were nervous about underestimating his re-election chances after they were burned so badly in 2016. Trump also presided over a strong American economy for most of his first term. In the past, presidents seeking re-election on the back of a booming economy have had a very favorable history when it comes to staying in office.

The lack of a strong opposing candidate also kept Trump in the driver’s seat. Biden was one of over 20 Democrats to seek the party’s nomination heading into 2020, and his chances looked doomed on numerous occasions. He was eventually able to come-from-behind to overtake Bernie Sanders as the party’s nominee, however, which is when his odds started to turn. The pandemic and subsequent economic fallout also played a huge role in Trump’s dwindling odds.

Election night was also a wide ride of its own. While Trump began the night as an underdog, it didn’t take long for the odds to turn dramatically in his favor. Trump fared better than expected in a number of early swing states, including Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina. Those early results resulted in a frenzy of new bets on Trump to win the election at plus-money odds. With money flooding in on Trump, betting sites had to shift their odds accordingly.

The money is POURING IN on Donald Trump to win the election

Now: Biden -180 Trump +160 pic.twitter.com/yEOYLNerZB

— BetOnline.ag (@betonline_ag) October 30, 2020

Trump’s odds soared as high as -800 at BetOnline at one point on election night as the results continued to trickle in. However, the odds swung back in Biden’s favor as more and more states started to count their votes.

Trump’s odds surge was essentially akin to a Super Bowl underdog returning the game’s opening kickoff for a touchdown. While that kind of play may result in a slight shift of the live betting odds, it is still a fairly small event in the grand scheme of the game. You won’t see the odds change nearly as dramatically that early in a Super Bowl, which goes to show just how soft the political betting market still is.