Same-game betting game-changer
Parlay option will be popular for Super Bowl
Fanduel sportsbook paid out $13.4 million on a four-leg Cowboys-seahawks samegame parlay this season.
More than 20,000 bettors at the book wagered on the “anytime touchdown scorer” parlay that paid out at 39-1 odds when Tony Pollard, Ceedee Lamb, Brandin Cooks and DK Metcalf all scored in Dallas’ 41-35 win over Seattle.
Caesars Sportsbook also took a big hit on same-game parlays on the same Nov. 30 matchup in which seven players scored touchdowns. A Caesars bettor turned $500 into $50,000 by hitting a five-leg anytime touchdown scorer parlay at 100-1 odds on Pollard, Lamb, Cooks, Metcalf and Jake Ferguson.
“We actually did well to the game, but all the samegame parlays turned it into a pretty significant loser,” Caesars vice president of trading Craig Mucklow said.
If the Chiefs-49ers Super Bowl turns into a shootout, a similar scenario might play out Sunday at Allegiant Stadium.
“In a high-scoring game with multiple touchdown scorers, the results could get pretty ugly (for books),” Caesars assistant director of trading Adam Pullen said. “It’s better that we have Travis Kelce score three touchdowns than Kelce, (Patrick) Mahomes and (Isiah) Pacheco all score. The same-game parlays definitely could throw a wrench in our results, depending how the game goes.
“People love those anytime touchdown parlays.”
Same-game parlays are a relatively new sports betting innovation that have become wildly popular across the country and will be widely available at Las Vegas sportsbooks for the Super Bowl for the first time.
Caesars and BETMGM sportsbooks have recently migrated Nevada users onto their national platform for their mobile apps and now offer users the ability to build their own same-game parlays or wager on premade SGPS.
Station Casinos has upgraded its STN Sports app and also offers customers the option to make their own SGPS or bet on prebuilt SGPS.
Other books, including Circa Sports and the Westgate Superbook, have posted a plethora of premade SGPS on the Super Bowl.
“You’re looking to hit a semi-lottery ticket,” Red Rock Resort sportsbook director Chuck Esposito said. “You’re tying multiple things together that you hope occur, and you’re getting a really good payout for it.”
A same-game parlay is a single wager that connects multiple outcomes from the same game. All legs of the parlay must win for the bettor to win their wager.
For example, a prebuilt SGP at Circa is for Christian Mccaffrey and George Kittle to score touchdowns and the 49ers to win. That pays +490. Circa also allows bettors to wager that the parlay will not hit, in this case at -650.
Another SGP at Circa is for Mccaffrey, Kittle, Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk to all score TDS and the Niners win. That pays 42-1.
Bettors also can mix and match players and teams in the same game, such as Patrick Mahomes to throw three or more touchdown passes and San Francisco wins for +775.
“The public likes to play something that has low risk and a high reward,” Superbook oddsmaker Jeff Sherman said. “That’s what a lot of these same-game parlays do. They’re extremely popular.”
Until the advent of SGPS, sportsbooks have historically restricted bettors from placing a correlated parlay — a wager where if one leg wins, the chances increase that the other leg will also win.
In fact, bettors still aren’t able to place traditional side-and-total parlays in certain games with a big favorite and low total.
“Double-digit point spreads on the NFL, we don’t take favorite-and-over or underdog-and-under parlays,” Sherman said. “Now with algorithms, they’ll account for stuff like that. Pricing takes into account the correlations.
“It’s less of a payout than if you had put in a regular parlay based on -110.”
Unless, of course, you parlay five players to score a touchdown in the same game and strike gold.