Leading up to Super Bowl 46, the talk in the sports gambling world centered around the sports books being primed to take a big hit if the Giants could pull off another upset over the Patriots. With New York getting three points throughout most Las Vegas casinos and many analysts picking them to win the game outright, it was widely believed that the house would lose big if the Giants covered the spread. That did not happen.
According to Game On!, Nevada’s 184 legal sports books took in $93,889,840 worth of action on the game. When the game ended, the sports books had made $5,064,470. That was a significant difference from the 2008 Super Bowl between New York and New England when Las Vegas lost more than $2.5 million on the Giants’ victory.
As you would have seen in our predictions last weekend before the Super Bowl, my money would have been on the G-Men if I were a gambling man. As a fan of the Patriots, my flawed reasoning had the tiniest section of my mind believing the Pats could pull it off because the house always wins. My line of thinking was that it was Vegas’ turn to get even from the beating they took in 2008, since a lot of money was probably on the Giants. Obviously, that didn’t happen. New York won outright and the Vegas sports books won big anyway. It’s true that the house always wins — they just might do it when you least expect it.
