How To Make Money in Super Bowl 43

In the Super Bowl, it is oftentimes profitable to bet the favorite MoneyLine(to win) as a result of an market inefficiency caused by a particularity in human psychology.

People don’t like to risk a lot of money to win a little money. The flip side is also true. People like to risk a little money to win a lot of money.

I’ve read quite a few studies/theses on this in fields outside of gambling, but a typical donk’s obsession with betting parlays and longshot futures should convince you of this. This usually manifests itself in the portion of the public that wants to bet the underdog(and there’s a lot of them) placing wagers on the ML and moving it artificially lower to a point where the favorite ML can be +EV.

How is it possible that this happens with the Super Bowl – the most efficient and transparent market in the sporting world – you ask? How can something be this well-known and open to millions of bettors be available? I have a few theories, though this is the strongest:

The inefficiency is localized: This phenomenon mainly exists on sports books that have a larger proportion of square/public/recreational clientele. This seems evident if we compare Vegas MLs with Online MLs with the assumption that online markets are sharper than Vegas ones just as online poker is.

Online:
http://www.sbrlines.com/LinesWebsite/Lines.aspx?l=2#/odds/nfl/whole_game/moneyline.html

Vegas:
http://www.vegasinsider.com/nfl/odds/las-vegas/money/

After gazing at these lines, one may wonder, what would be a fair ML? During the regular season a -6.5 -106/+6.5 -102 spread with ~47 total(current Pinny lines) would equate to a +/- 255 ML. It is possible that the game being played on a neutral field decreases the distribution of scores in the Pittsburgh -0.5 to Pittsburgh -6.5 range somewhat, but it is unlikely that it could be large enough to move it to more than a handful of cents.

LOL @ knowing having to know anything about sports – Steelers -200/-210/-220 - BIG.

(Also find yourself some a morsel of Cardinals +7 -115/Cardinals +230 for the middle/arbitrage)