Even Billy Joel knows this.
A few years ago BJ sang the national anthem at the Super Bowl. Before he performed, he heard that various sports books had set an over/under on how long it would take him to complete America's song and joked that he could make some money off the line.
"He said he was going to sing the anthem really fast and bet the under," Richard Gardner said.
Gardner is the Bodog.com sportsbook manager, the guy charged with putting together all those silly, screwy, fun prop bets people bet on during the Super Bowl. (According to the Nevada Gaming Control Board, more than $81 million was legally wagered on the game in Las Vegas last year, which doesn't include the aforementioned prop bets or take into account the billions that exchange hands in offshore casinos or with your friendly neighborhood bookies.)
There are some prop bet mainstays each year (the coin flip, what color the Gatorade will be when it's dumped on the winning coach, etc.), but most of the oddball lines and over/unders are set according to the ever-developing story lines associated with the game. For Super Bowl XLIV, you can bet on how many times the TV shot will feature Peyton Manning's pop Archie (over/under 4), how often CBS will show Bourbon Street (over/under 2), and how much face time Reggie Bush's paramour, Kim Kardashian, will enjoy (over/under 2).
And lest you think this is all slapped together without much thought, a fair amount of research goes into setting the lines - however absurd. If you dig the downtime, you can bet on "which Super Bowl commercial will have a higher rating on USA Today's annual ad meter." Just understand it's not all luck. There's some precedence here.
"Oh, there's lots of historical data," Gardner told me. "Doritos won last year, and traditionally Anheuser-Busch/Budweiser has done very well. That's why we installed Bud as the 2-3 favorite."
Remarkably, he sounded pretty serious when he said all that.
