Posted on 13 February 2025 in General
Super Bowl LIX saw the Philadelphia Eagles (+1.5) win their second Super Bowl and deny the Kansas City Chiefs a historic three-peat with a dominant performance, resulting in a 40-22 victory. A scoreline which may even flatter the Chiefs who were down 34-0 with 2 minutes left in the third quarter before scoring a couple of consolation touchdowns late in the fourth quarter against the Eagles’ backups.
So far, only Nevada and New Jersey have released Super Bowl LIX wagering data. Combined handle has come in at 7.8% ahead of H2’s estimates, suggesting total handle may be slightly above H2’s $1.6bn estimate for the US – although this is a small data sample.
As stressed in our Super Bowl preview and throughout the season, hold rate has become far less dependent on the match outcome, especially with the increase in popularity in prop bets. Nevada’s record hold rate of 14.6% this year is evidence of this; analysis of Nevada’s hold rate for the previous 34 Super Bowls shows that an underdog win has resulted in an average hold rate of just 6.3%, below the 7.3% average across these games. However, this year’s hold rate was clearly driven by the performance of prop bets rather than the match outcome.
Super Bowl LIX is set to shatter previous gross win records as Nevada and New Jersey post a combined 14.8% hold rate - driven by a strong prop bet performance for bookmakers. Eagles’ running back, Saquon Barkley was by far the most popular player when it came to the prop bets following a historic season however, despite his team scoring 40 points, he was not able to find the endzone. This was vital for bookmakers with Caesars even suggesting ahead of kick off that their Super Bowl performance was reliant on Barkley’s performance. This hold rate will claw some performance back for the bookmakers who come off the back of a historically bad NFL season.