Nevada casinos up $6.9 million on Superbowl bets

Official numbers from the Nevada Gaming Control Board show that Nevada casinos won almost $6.9 million on this year’s Super Bowl as bettors wagered $82.7 million on the NFL classic.
Bookies in the gambling mecca were up $179 000 on amounts won on sports bets over the same period last year on $1.21 million more in bets.
Underdogs New Orleans Saints beat the favoured Indianapolis Colts 31-17 in the Sunday game.
Speaking to Associated Press, Jay Kornegay, executive director of the race and sports book at the Las Vegas Hilton, said results were hurt by bad weather in the northeastern United States, which prevented some gamblers from making planned trips to bet on the game in Sin City.
But he said the bets taken on the game were indicative of today’s struggles for casinos in Las Vegas. “We thought the Super Bowl was a great measuring stick of the economy and we think the economy is just a little better than what it was last year,” Kornegay said.
Kornegay said his sports book accepted 14 percent more wagers than it did last year, but average bets were lower.
Nevada’s biggest Super Bowl win in the last 10 years was in 2005, when the New England Patriots topped the Philadelphia Eagles and casinos won $15.4 million. Bettors wagered the most in 2006, when $94.5 million was bet on the Pittsburgh Steelers victory over the Seattle Seahawks.
Nevada casinos lost almost $2.6 million in 2008, when the New York Giants beat the favored Patriots.
Kornegay said the Hilton lost money on the game in part because it lost money on normally lucrative proposition wagers. Casinos usually profit by offering long odds on unusual circumstances players like to bet on – a successful 2-point conversion, for example.
“A lot of things happened in this game that normally don’t happen,” Kornegay said. “Those are all props that normally go the other way.”

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