SB 55 Betting Breakdown: Odds On The Super Bowl Going To Overtime

• Super Bowl 55 has -2500 odds to not go into overtime.
• Only one Super Bowl has ever gone into overtime, Super Bowl LI.
• Tom Brady was a participant in that Super Bowl as the Patriots came back from 28-3 down to beat the Falcons.

LAS VEGAS - The Super Bowl matchup between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs looks to be an exciting one.

The online sportsbooks are already offering a bunch of different wagers, and it’s important to understand the context for all of them.

These wagers are up simply because people will bet on them - the Super Bowl has the largest pool of new bettors for the entire year.

What that means is that sometimes they offer odds that are value traps. Unfortunately, this betting breakdown could fall into that category.

This is a pretty straightforward bet to analyze. In the entirety of the history of the Super Bowl, only one Super Bowl has ever gone to overtime.

That Super Bowl was Super Bowl LI, also known as the 28-3 game, in which Tom Brady’s New England Patriots came back to win against the Atlanta Falcons.

However, even if one looks only at the sample size of Super Bowls that involve Tom Brady, that’s still only one out of nine.

The implied probability of -2500 odds sits at 96.2%, which means that any value to be found in this wager is on that side of it. With only one overtime Super Bowl out of 54 chances, the actual chances of an OT Super Bowl are 1.8%.

This means that accurate odds on the No side of this wager would be somewhere in the -5400 range. That said, it’s hard for many new bettors to wager on -2500 returns, which are quite minor at low dollar values. A $100 bet would only net $4 dollars if it were to hit.

The other side of this wager, obviously, is a bit of a trap.

Even if one accepts that the actual odds for a game to go into overtime in the Super Bowl are higher than the rate at which it has occurred, these odds are not great.

For example, +700 odds carry an implied probability of 12.5%, which is higher than any reasonable person would put the chances of this event occurring at.

In other words, the sportsbooks are giving bettors a lower payout than the actual rarity of the occurrence would imply.

It’s worth noting that Tom Brady has faced off against Patrick Mahomes in the playoffs once before, and that matchup did go to overtime.

In the 2019 AFC Championship Game, Brady’s Patriots took a 37-31 victory in OT over Mahomes’ Chiefs.

However, it seems that the smart way to wager on this one is by taking the No option, but -2500 odds give a return of about 4%. Most bettors aren’t going to risk units on 4% returns, despite the fact that they should honestly consider doing so in this case.

However, nothing is guaranteed in Super Bowl betting, and it’s quite simply difficult for many people to wager large portions of their bankroll for minimal returns with the possibility of losing it all looming large in their minds.