Why Do So Many People Bet on the Super Bowl Coin Toss?

The Super Bowl is the biggest annual sporting event in the United States, both for fans as well as sportsbooks. Over $185 million was wagered on Super Bowl 58 last year in Nevada sportsbooks alone, while estimates nationwide were set at over $23 billion.

The Super Bowl coin toss is one of the most popular bets in sports, despite the fact that there is no way to handicap the outcome. It's a 50/50 proposition, and either heads or tails will come up. So why do so many people wager on something that, in the end, is the equivalent of absolute dumb luck?

Join us as we try to make heads or tails of the psychology and mathematics behind one of the oddest bets in all of sports.

Simplicity and accessibility

It’s hard to think of anything in sports betting that gives you a quicker outcome than betting on the coin toss at the Super Bowl. After all, we are talking about something that takes about three seconds from when the coin leaves the hand to when the side facing up is announced.

And it's a 50/50 proposition. It's either going to land heads or tails. Betting on it requires no knowledge of the game. There’s no way you can take a "bad beat" and lose. That means anybody can bet on it, whether it’s a die-hard fan or someone who only watches the game to see the commercials.

That’s why, unlike most bets placed in a two-sided market, there’s little to no juice. In fact, bet365 and DraftKings currently have both heads and tails priced at +100. That means they’re not taking a single penny from any of the winning bets. 

Though widely available, some areas don't offer this market. In America, it's only in 20 states and Washington, DC. However, it’s offered nearly everywhere in Canada. 

So, with no juice and limited audiences, why offer it at all? Mainly because it gets people into the action. And when you’re betting on the coin flip, you’re more likely to hang around and bet on other Super Bowl props. And those other wagers are where books make their money.

The thrill of the unknown

Want to bet on trends? Good luck. Since Super Bowl 51, where tails won for a fourth straight year, there’s been no real trend to go by. Heads has won four of the last seven times, with neither side coming up more than two years in a row. 

You could go by heads having hit three of the last four years, but doing so would ignore the fact that tails has been the winning side in seven of the last 11 Super Bowls. Then again, 28 of the 58 coin flips have come up heads, with tails being the correct selection the other 30 times. 

And that’s not even addressing the fact that winning the coin toss has little to no bearing on who wins the game itself. While the Kansas City Chiefs have won both the coin toss and the game over each of the last two seasons — heads — the previous eight Super Bowl champions lost the coin flip. 

Furthermore, only 26 of the 58 Super Bowl champions won the toss. That’s not to mention the AFC has won nine of the last 13 tosses. Want another fun stat? You have to go back to the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl 45 to find the last team from the NFC to win both the coin toss and the game itself.

Influence of prop-betting culture

Caesars Sportsbook reported last year that a bettor placed a $100,000 wager on the result of the coin flip, going with the “Tails never fails” mantra. He lost that wager.

But the fact that someone would stake that kind of money on something nobody controls shows just how popular Super Bowl props are. After all, there’s not a sporting event in the entire world that offers more unique props. 

Want to bet on the length of the national anthem or America The Beautiful? You can! Do you think you know which song Kendrick Lamar will perform to open the halftime show? Take a shot. But even then, nearly all of these bets can be placed with some handicapping, even if it’s limited, as you can evaluate things such as how the anthem performer has sung the song in the past. The coin toss is chaos.

The psychological appeal

A 2014 study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology stated that there’s an overwhelming bias when random individuals are asked to select the outcome of a coin toss. They’re 80% likely to pick whichever option they hear first — whether it’s “heads” or “tails” — or even a color on either side of a coin.

Yet bettors of the coin toss don’t follow that psychology. Books have reported in recent years that tails is often the preferred choice, ranging between 51% and 56% of both the bets placed and the actual handle amount.

The trap many bettors fall