Thinking of placing some Super Bowl prop bets? Whether you are a first-time bettor or an experienced gambler, the Super Bowl offers some of the most exciting proposition bets you will ever find. As the championship game of the National Football League (NFL), the Super Bowl is the biggest sporting event in the United States. It is played between the winners of the NFL’s American Football Conference and National Football Conference, and every year a different city hosts the game.

History of the Super Bowl

The history of the Super Bowl goes back to 1960 when some businessmen began the American Football League (AFL) to fulfill their wish to start pro football franchises. The AFL soon became a worthy competitor of the NFL, and by 1966, there were talks between the two of negotiating a merger. That finally happened in 1970, but, before that, the champions of each league began playing each other at the end of the season in a new championship game that was called the AFL-NFL World Championship.

From the marketing point of view, it wasn’t a very appealing name and the organizers began to look for something more catchy. Then, in 1969, Lamar Hunt, the owner of the AFL Kansas city Chief, devised the name Super Bowl as a temporary measure, but the name was taken up by the media and became popular with the public. So, all the games thereafter became Super Bowl games. That very year, in 1969, it also became customary to use Roman numerals to designate the individual games.

The inaugural game took place in the Los Angeles Coliseum on January 15, 1967. It was between the Green Bay Packers of the NFL and the Kansas City Chiefs of the AFL. The former defeated the latter 35-10. While the crowd in the Los Angeles Coliseum was less than sell out, the game was broadcast on two television networks and around 65 million viewers watched it. At the time, it was the largest viewership for a televised sporting event in the United States.

The public attention has only grown ever since then and the NFL championship game has become an unofficial national holiday in the United States. Super Bowl Sunday, which is the day that the Super Bowl game takes place, is almost on par with Thanksgiving now. There is intensive media buildup in the week prior, accompanied by a festival atmosphere in the city hosting the game. People get together in homes, bars, and restaurants to have meals and enjoy drinks as they watch the televised game. It is the most-watched sports program on American television. During the game, there are plenty of pregame and halftime ceremonies and entertainment.

The Super Bowl and Prop Betting

Prop betting consists of placing wagers on individual players and their performances and on various other events and activities that take place during the game. The outcome or final score of the game does not concern or affect prop betting. You can bet on almost anything, except moneylines, point spreads, and totals.

While prop betting has been around for a long time, its connection with the Super Bowl began on January 26, 1986. The Chicago Bears were playing the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX, and Manteris, an oddsmaker who ran the Caesars sportsbook, thought that a prop bet involving William “The Fridge” Perry, defensive tackle of the Chicago Bears, would attract more casual bettors to place bets on the game. He set the line at 20-1 on the assumption that Perry wouldn’t be able to score a touchdown against the Patriots.

After that, Jimmy Vaccaro, an oddsmaker with MGM, and various other Las Vegas sportsbooks put up the same line. Unfortunately for them, Perry did end up scoring a touchdown and the sportsbooks took a major beating. However, the gamblers made a fortune and the popularity of prop betting soared after that.

Another oddsmaker, Jay Kornegay, took prop betting to another level when, in an effort to make Super Bowl Sunday more exciting and keep people entertained until the end, he began offering over 100 different props. The Super Bowl prop bets were not restricted to the game and that idea became very popular too.