Super Bowl LVIII betting roundtable: Which game specials should you bet on?
How should you bet the game specials for Super Bowl LVIII?
NFL betting experts Eric Moody, Erin Dolan, Seth Walder and Kevin Pulsifer provide their insights.
Odds by ESPN BET
What advice, if any, do you give people regarding novelty props such as coin toss and Gatorade color?
Dolan: Have fun with this! The coin toss is one of the most popular props to bet on for a reason. It's a specialty and people want to have fun betting on something that is truly 50-50. Without getting into the nitty-gritty of the coin toss, tails won last year, for what that is worth. Gatorade can be a little more complex. Purple won last season and ESPN BET has pink/red as the favorite with clear/water posted as the long shot. This is another fun market, but not as fun as the coin flip excitement at the beginning of the game, if you ask me!
Moody: My favorite novelty prop bet is the color of the first Gatorade poured on the winning head coach. Teams and players in the NFL are superstitious and live by their routines. Erin noted that purple Gatorade was the drink the Chiefs dumped on Andy Reid during last year's Super Bowl. That's what I recommend, because I believe Kansas City will win and it's also Taylor Swift's favorite color.
Walder: On Gatorade color, I think you really just have to play the number because I can't imagine that the chances are really that different from simply the likelihood of each color drink being on the sideline. And so to me the choice that easily stands out is water/clear (+1000). Is it feasible that water is on the sideline? Extremely!
Sportsbooks are leveraging Kelce/Swift with lots of specials. Is there one that stands out to you?
Dolan:Travis Kelceanytime touchdown scorer and KC Chiefs to win +280. For starters, I like the Chiefs to win outright. Patrick Mahomes and Kelce have chemistry and have been on this big stage plenty of times. Kelce just finished with 11 receptions for 116 receiving yards and one touchdown against the best defense in the league.
The narrative around the Chiefs during the regular season surrounded wideouts dropping passes. Kelce's name was included in those conversations, but there is no negating the chemistry between these two players and the fact that Kelce has scored three touchdowns this postseason. It also doesn't hurt that Kelce scored against the Eagles in the Super Bowl last year.
Pulsifer: I'll echo Erin here from more of a betting theory angle. Kelce's TD prop is +100 and a Chiefs win is +104. Parlaying them would normally be +308 (a 25% implied chance of happening), and we're getting this at +280 (a 26% implied chance). If these events weren't correlated, it would make sense that they're this close. But I think Kelce scoring is greatly correlated with a Chiefs win, much more than a 1% increase in implied odds. If you like Kelce to score or the Chiefs to win, you should take this parlay with significantly better value.
