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Super Bowl 2024: Bettors continue to overwhelmingly back Chiefs to win

frank schwab
NFL writer
·2 min read
1.1k

The Kansas City Chiefs are "America's team" the next couple of weeks. At least "betting America's team."

The early bettors for Super Bowl LVIII are taking the Chiefs and that hasn't slowed down in the first few days since the matchup was set. Moneyline betting is completely one-sided for the Chiefs at BetMGM.

There are two traditional ways to bet on the outcome of a football game: the point spread and the moneyline. The moneyline is simply a bet on which team wins, at adjusted odds. At BetMGM the moneyline odds for the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl are -130 (bet $130 to win $100) and +110 for the Chiefs (bet $100 to win $110).

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Bettors love the underdog Chiefs to win. Kansas City is getting five times as many moneyline bets as the favored 49ers, according to BetMGM data analyst John Ewing.

That's a massive gap, though there are some caveats involved. Most Super Bowl bets come in the few days before the game; the bets that come in the first few days are a small percentage of the total that will be bet on the game. We could see a shift to the 49ers as the game gets closer. But there's no doubt the early betting money is on Kansas City. The Chiefs are 2-point underdogs on the point spread, and getting more than three-fourths of the money bet on the spread as of Tuesday as well.

The Chiefs are a highly visible team that is getting hot late, which is a perfect storm for the betting public. They've watched Patrick Mahomes emerge from a mediocre regular season, by his standards, to lead the Chiefs to three straight playoff wins and yet another Super Bowl. The 49ers haven't been impressive in the playoffs, barely beating the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions. The 49ers didn't cover the spread in either game. Recency bias is all in the Chiefs' favor.

The betting patterns could change over the next week and a half. But as of now, sportsbooks might be big fans of the 49ers on Super Bowl Sunday.