With the Super Bowl kickoff just minutes away, the backroom scene of the Las Vegas sportsbook is intense.
Bookmakers stare at their computers and a manager walks back and forth, sweating through his Sunday suit. The bets are pouring in, millions of dollars are at stake. It’s non-stop action.
Suddenly the room goes quiet and everyone stops to watch the TVs. Referees, team captains and the honorary coin flipper gather in the midfield. In the sportsbook, there is a gasp of anticipation when the coin is tossed in the air. Heads or tails to determine which team gets the ball first – and who gets to keep the money bet on the coin flip.
The coin spins from end to end, bounces on the field and settles on heads. The stressed out boss quickly asks, “How did we do it?”
An employee hastily assesses the bets, takes a deep breath, and responds with trepidation, “We just lost $ 38,000. We’re stuck 38 dimes and the game hasn’t even started.”
The boss asks another question: “What the f —?”
The Super Bowl coin flip is arguably the biggest two seconds in sports betting, and the amount of money that changes on it is ridiculous. Of the hundreds of betting options at the Super Bowl, from the color of the sports drink being dumped on the winning coach to whom the MVP first thanks in his acceptance speech, more money is going on the head or tails than any other.
“You’ve done all this work to bring out all these props, come up with cross-sports and everything else,” said Dave Sharapan, a longtime bookmaker in Las Vegas. “And the coin flip prop is the most wanted prop of all props every year.”
Heads versus tails
The Super Bowl coin flip has been on the plate at sportsbooks in Las Vegas for decades. Heads or tails, which team will win the toss and will that team decide to take the ball, defend it or delay it into the second half – you can bet on anything. And many people do, despite being charged more than five cents of the dollar for what is essentially a 50-50 proposition. (This Stanford University study used an angular momentum vector to prove that a coin that is flipped and caught in the hand tends to land the same way it began. But the Super Bowl coin lands on the ground and bounces often, and besides, what does Stanford do you know?)
Vince Bohbot, on the other hand, knows all about the actual coin used for the Super Bowl. Bohbot is an executive vice president at The Highland Mint in Melbourne, Florida. For the past 28 Super Bowls, The Highland Mint has created the opening roll coin.
In the 1990s, the coins were made of pure silver. Now, with the price of silver, the coins feature silver-plating and selective plating of 24-karat gold. The coins are comparable in size to a silver dollar. They weigh about an ounce and are 33 millimeters in diameter.
This year’s coin features ocean waves horizontally between the Kansas City Chiefs team logos and Tampa Bay Buccaneers to one side. The Super Bowl LV logo, with the Lombardi Trophy between the L and V, is on the opposite side. Traditionally, the side with the Lombardi Trophy is referred to as heads. According to Bohbot, both sides weigh practically the same.
“It’s so close; there could be a little difference on one side or the other. It depends on the design every year,” Bohbot told ESPN. “It doesn’t seem to have affected where the coin ends up each year.”
Tremendous interest in flipping a coin
Betting on the coin flip is silly, of course, and the size of most bets reflects that. Most, but not all.
As crazy as it may sound, five-digit bets on the coin flip are practically common. And there have been even bigger ones.
Art Manteris, who has been running sportsbooks in Las Vegas for over 40 years, remembers one of his high rollers at the old Hilton who bet $ 100,000 on the coin flip but came back to the other side a few hours later for $ 200,000.
“Said he had changed his mind,” remembers Manteris, now vice president at Station Casinos. “The change worked for him that day.”
Do you understand? Change. A bookmaker’s humor is simply the best.
The bet number on the coin flip prop is one of the first counters that use the Super Bowl betting windows to remember. They need the number to enter the bet into the computer system, which they do repeatedly on the coin flip. The coin flip bettor rarely knows the bet number, Sharapan says.
In his time at the betting windows on Super Bowl Sunday, Sharapan has heard all kinds of theories, from coin-flip bettors, from the reportedly heavier tails, to lawns that produce more heads than grass due to the extra bounce. However, nothing is cited as the reason behind a coin flip bet more than “coin never fails”.
“We used to draw a line between me and the boy or girl next to me at the desk to see how often we heard ‘tails never fail’ during a shift,” Sharapan said. “We kept a counting sheet behind the counter to keep track of things. We put the line at 18.5. I would always switch.”
To annoy his colleagues and win his bet, Sharapan asked customers who flipped the coin if they had ever heard of that old saying about tails. Inevitably, the gambler would blurt, “Tails never fail.”
Besides, tails sometimes fail. In the 54 Super Bowls, the coin toss landed heads 25 times.
Coin flip bets aren’t just an American debacle, by the way. It is also popular abroad.
“It has always been a popular prop bet, whether in the US or abroad,” said Andrew Mannino, senior analyst at PointsBet, a longtime Australian bookmaker who entered the US market in recent years.
Bookmakers aren’t quite sure what drives the betting interest on the coin flip, and they don’t really care. After all, it’s nice to be able to count a five-cent vig on a 50-50 bet.
Last year, more money – a few hundred thousand dollars – was bet on flipping the coin than any other bet at William Hill US books. With the company operating in multiple states this year, coin betting is expected to increase significantly this year.
“Last year we needed ‘tails that never fail’ and we got the result we wanted,” said Adam Pullen, deputy director of trade at William Hill US.
FanDuel wasn’t so lucky last year, paying out $ 200,000 in bets on coins before the game even got underway. There was, of course, a lot of money on the head, but not as much as when driving with coin, and the $ 200,000 payout gives you an idea of how much is put in when flipping a coin.
“I am startled by the dollars every year,” said Nick Bogdanovich, William Hill US Trade Director. They just bang on it. I am completely amazed every year. ‘