All hail the lowly Vegas bookie or, as they usually prefer, the "oddsmaker." Sunday is Christmas morning for the elves who concoct those betting lines used the world over as the basis for partaking in the single biggest gambling event of the year.
Steve Friess
Jay Rood, oddsmaker for MGM Mirage, favored the Indianapolis Colts to win by 5 as of Friday, although he expected that to change by game time depending on how bettors wager.
"If it wasn't for the betting, the NFL's market share would be reduced by half because people watch games because they have action on them," said Johnny Avello, sports book director at the Wynn Las Vegas resort. "The teams are somewhat exciting," he conceded, "but they're that much more exciting if you have a bet on them."
Here's proof: Miami is expecting some 100,000 visitors for Super Bowl XLIV. Las Vegas, meanwhile, expects nearly three times as many -- 278,000, according to a projection by the tourism bureau. And they're not even allowed to use the words "Super Bowl" anywhere. Instead, party-throwers dub it the Big Game or the Super Party or, as they say at the sports books up and down the Strip, "professional football championship game."
As the media descends on the site of the Super Bowl immediately after the NFC and AFC championships are decided, the work commences in Vegas for the likes of Avello and Jay Rood, who sets the betting line for the 10 MGM Mirage casinos in Nevada, including the Mirage and Bellagio.
It is no overstatement that millions of dollars ride on their judgments. Indeed, Rood estimated Super Bowl revenues account for as much as 20 percent of the entire year's "handle."
What's surprising is how much absolute power these men have. There's no committee, nobody debating what the opening line ought to be. It comes entirely from their gut instincts and their sense of how the public will bet.
"People probably think there's something a little more involved in it than there is," said Rood, who can personally shift the betting lines across the country because MGM Mirage is the largest casino corporation in the only U.S. state where sports gambling is legal. "But really, you take a pencil, you take a pad of paper and you do a little research."
Rood, 41, was a volleyball player in college and took over this gig two years ago after years of setting the line for "insignificant sports" like Nascar and bull-riding. Avello, 57, came to Wynn after doing the job for 15 years at Bally's Las Vegas.
Avello opened at his line giving the Colts a 4-point edge, meaning that the Colts would have to win by more than 4 points for the bettor to win. Rood started at 3.5 points for Indy. As it turned out, bettors picked Indianapolis in droves, forcing the oddsmakers to raise the line to a high of 5.5 points, meaning Indianapolis had to win by at least six for the bettor to triumph.
"We're not predicting that the Colts are vastly superior to the Saints," Rood said. "What I'm trying to accomplish is when the guy comes to the counter, I want him to hesitate on betting the Colts maybe. If he's extremely confident, then I've probably got a bad number up there."
The lines have moved back down since then as more bettors have picked the Saints amid concerns about injuries for key Indianapolis players.
Another Vegas attraction are know as the prop bets, or unusual wagers that appeal to recreational gamblers. They can put their money on anything from whether both the Saints' Reggie Bush and Colts' Reggie Wayne will score to whether the Colts will score more points on Sunday than L.A. Lakers star Kobe Bryant on Saturday.
If history is any guide, more than $90 million may be bet legally in Nevada on the Colts-Saints game. This makes NFL brass, who have repeatedly denied Las Vegas even consideration for a possible football team, extremely uncomfortable.
For years, the NFL banned Las Vegas from advertising during nationally televised games including the Super Bowl. In December, they slightly reversed that rule, permitting the city to advertise so long as "specific hotels, casinos and other institutions that house gambling" are not represented in the ad. The tourism board declined, opting instead to spend $1.4 million on other programs encouraging tourism for Super Bowl Sunday.
With a 13.5 percent uptick in visitation expected this weekend, the strategy appears to have worked.
Reggie Hylton, 25, lives in Weston, Fla., just north of Miami. But even so, he wanted to be here.
"Without a bet, the Super Bowl is boring," Hylton said. "I probably wouldn't watch."
