Super Bowl betting about even for Nevada casinos

By Liz Benston (contact)

Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2003 | 11:05 a.m.

Sunday's Super Bowl game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Oakland Raiders yielded $71.7 million in wagers for Nevada sports books -- a number roughly in line with last year, according to state figures released Tuesday.

Nevada casinos won $5.3 million from gamblers on the title event, topping last year's $2.3 million in Super Bowl revenue, the Nevada Gaming Control Board said.

The "hold percentage" -- the amount of wagers kept by the casinos as a percentage of the total -- was 7.3 percent compared to last year's 3.3 percent.

For all the event's hype this year, the total number of bets was significantly less than Nevada's record $77.3 million in wagers taken on the Denver Broncos-Green Bay Packers game in 1998.

The Broncos beat the Packers that year, an upset between two popular teams with scores of regional fans.

"The economy was strong that year and you had two West Coast fan favorites," said Frank Streshley, senior research analyst for the Gaming Control Board.

There's also growing competition for Nevada's long-held monopoly on sports betting in the form of online gambling sites, Streshley said.

Casino operators also say they are seeing far fewer six-figure bets than in past years -- a sign that professional and more sophisticated bettors are taking their money online.

But that doesn't mean sports books aren't still making a profit, operators say.

"The handle doesn't always equate to win, but if you look at our year-over-year (numbers), hold was better and handle was larger," Boyd Gaming Corp. spokesman Rob Stillwell said.

MGM MIRAGE said it also did well on the matchup, which had a huge swing in last-minute money from the Raiders to the underdog Buccaneers.

"We wrote more tickets on this Super Bowl than any other bowl in history, but there wasn't a large amount of large bets," said Robert Walker, race and sports book director for MGM MIRAGE.

Total bets were up from two years ago and would have been up about 30 percent from last year if not for a single $5 million bet, he said.

The books did well this year in part because casinos won a popular two-team "parlay" bet that required gamblers to win two separate propositions at once. One bet called for Tampa Bay to win and a lower final score, while another called for the Raiders to win and a higher final score.

"Just the opposite happened. Neither one hit," Streshley said. "Tampa Bay was known for their good defense so (bettors) thought it would also be a low scoring game. People who felt the Raiders would win thought it would be a high scoring game."

Sports books also scored on so-called proposition bets that call for bets on everything from how many interceptions per team to who would score the first touchdown, he said.

The Super Bowl has evolved into something of a national holiday for football fans. It's also one of the busiest single days for Nevada casinos, which pulled out the stops last Sunday to roll out everything from VIP parties with former NFL players to modest, stadium-fare buffets.

For all the event's hype, Super Bowl revenue still accounts for only a small fraction of a casino's overall win. The event can still generate more than 35 percent of the book's yearly revenue, though the sports pool may only account for about 2 percent of the revenue for an entire casino, state figures show.

And unlike other casino games, which are more predictable because they follow set rules, the amount won by gamblers betting on sports is volatile because it depends on a myriad of singular bets.

In 2001, for example, casinos only generated $67.7 million in wagers from the Baltimore Ravens-New York Giants matchup. Gamblers fared as poorly as the Giants, as casinos won about $11 million on that game. The hold percentage that year was 16.3 percent.

1998's Denver Broncos win generated a record amount of wagers but left casinos near the losing end. Sports books won less than half a million from gamblers that year, a hold percentage of only 0.6 percent.

Today's sports books are more of an amenity for guests rather than the main attraction, said Michael Tew, a casino industry analyst with Bear, Stearns & Co.

"People don't go to the Las Vegas Strip just to place sports wagers. Maybe for the Super Bowl -- but Las Vegas itself has a broader entertainment base that people likely take advantage of when they're in town."

Rose Sherman and David Ransom were among the thousands of people who descended on Las Vegas to take in the game.

The friends -- Sherman from Northridge and Ransom from Los Angeles -- were Raiders fans who found themselves sandwiched between a crowd of cheering Bucs bettors at the Bellagio Sunday afternoon.

The fact that they might soon lose money on the favored team didn't appear to dampen their plans to take in a show, dine out and explore the city beyond the green felt jungle.

"We don't come here just for gambling. It just adds to the excitement," Sherman said.

The trip was an opportunity for her boyfriend to see Vegas for the first time and would be the first time she would stay at the Bellagio.

"There are so many other things to do," Ransom said.