Super Bowl overtime delivers big swing for betting public - ESPN

LAS VEGAS — As kickoff approached Sunday, sportsbooks were almost unanimously rooting for the favored San Francisco 49ers to win in a low-scoring Super Bowl.

Late in the fourth quarter, everything was going the books' way. Then, the game went into overtime.

The underdog Kansas City Chiefs rallied from behind in overtime to pull out a 25-22 win behind another Super Bowl MVP performance from quarterback Patrick Mahomes, resulting in a big swing in favor of the betting public.

The Chiefs covered the spread as 2-point underdogs, and the game went over the consensus closing total of 46.5. Both were good results for the betting public, as was overtime.

The odds of the game going to overtime at ESPN BET were 11-1, and multiple sportsbooks reported lopsided action on the game going into OT.

«Overtime was bad,» said Craig Mucklow, vice president of trading for Caesars Sportsbook. «It was our biggest loser of the prop bets.»

The betting public also made a big score on San Francisco running back Christian McCaffrey scoring a touchdown, but sportsbooks avoided a TD from Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, which was an extremely popular bet this week. As of Saturday at Caesars Sportsbook, there were more bets on McCaffrey and Kelce to each score a touchdown than there were on the 49ers point spread and money line combined.

«It was a bad Super Bowl for the sportsbook,» Tristan Davis, senior trader for BetMGM, said in a company release. «Many bettors had the Chiefs winning and overs on popular player props.»

The over/under total had been at 47.5 or 47 for much of the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl but dropped to 46.5 on Sunday at a lot of sportsbooks. The Chiefs led 13-10 entering the fourth quarter.

Kansas City scored the winning