Arkansas bettors won big at Super Bowl LVIII, according to Saracen Casino – Arkansas Times
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On Sunday alone, the Super Bowl matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers drew about 60,000 mobile wagers on BetSaracen — Saracen Casino Resort’s mobile app for sports betting.
Carlton Saffa, chief market officer for the Pine Bluff casino, said that during yesterday’s peak between 4-5 p.m., “We were doing almost 10,000 bets an hour.”
Data published by the Arkansas Racing Commission shows about 60% of all mobile wagering in Arkansas happens on the BetSaracen app, Saffa said. The rest is split between Oaklawn Casino’s Oaklawn Sports app and Southland Casino’s Betly app. Saracen saw about twice the betting volume in 2024’s Super Bowl compared to last year’s big game, which set a U.S. viewership record second only to the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing.
This year’s Super Bowl will likely shatter the record set last year, given the public interest surrounding the romance between Taylor Swift and Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.
Saffa said some NFL games draw very large bets at the casino, but the Super Bowl is a different animal, with more volume and casual wagering.
“We didn’t really have anybody come in with six-figure bets on this game,” Saffa said. “But instead, we had tens of thousands of Arkansans piling in to bet in smaller levels.”
The Chiefs won the game 25-22, their second consecutive Super Bowl win. A couple hours before kickoff, about 85% of the money wagered by BetSaracen users on the outcome of the game was on the Chiefs, Saffa said. That number dropped to about 80% at kickoff, and went back up to 85% around halftime, even though the Chiefs were losing at that point, Saffa said.
Saffa declined to say how much the casino lost on yesterday’s game, but he said the loss was substantial.
“It was not in the millions,” Saffa said, “but the public came out several hundred thousand dollars ahead.”
In today’s online betting market, the most popular bets aren’t always on the moneyline (picking a team to win), the point spread, or the over/under of the total amount of points scored. Saffa said the casino’s biggest liability wasn’t on the game’s outcome but on whether or not Travis Kelce scored a touchdown in the game. Kelce is one the league’s best tight ends and has a knack for scoring touchdowns in big moments, so this would’ve been a popular bet even if it weren’t for people hoping to see Taylor Swift’s boyfriend score on the biggest stage of all time.
But Kelce did not score. If he had, Saffa said, the casino’s losses would’ve been much more substantial.
“We would’ve been into seven figures very easily,” Saffa said. “Could’ve been as high as $2 million if Kelce had scored.”
The second most popular winning bet — after a Chiefs victory — was on San Francisco running back Christian McCaffrey scoring a touchdown.
The biggest win against the odds was that a non-quarterback would throw a touchdown. It paid about 40/1 (a $100 bet pays $4,000) odds, and Saracen bettors won when San Francisco wide receiver Jauan Jennings threw a touchdown pass to McCaffrey. It was just the sixth touchdown pass thrown by a non-quarterback in Super Bowl history.
Saffa said that play alone resulted in a six-figure loss for the sportsbook, and a payout for “about 500 Arkansans.”
Even with the majority of bettors on the Chiefs, the sports book got off as clean as it could, Saffa said, because some of their top liabilities — like Kelce scoring — didn’t hit.
Had the 49ers won, it would’ve been a profitable night for Saracen and “if you bet a non-quarterback (to throw a touchdown) you’re smiling today,” Saffa said.
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