The Kansas City Chiefs are the champions of Super Bowl LVIII, beating many of the long odds placed against them, much to the chagrin of sports betting companies as they had to pay out more money to users. According to FanDuel (FLUT), over 14 million Super Bowl bets were placed on its platform alone.
Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Canal, Pras Subramanian, and Josh Schafer break down the latest developments for sports betting companies after the results of the Super Bowl.
For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.
Editor's note: This article was written by Nicholas Jacobino
Video Transcript
JOSH SCHAFER: Moving on from Amazon that's making that big bet on the NFL, so did 2.5 million people who gambled on FanDuel alone. FanDuel telling us that 14 million wagers were placed last night, with a total handle reaching over $307 million. But, guys, one of the key takeaways from last night was the house wasn't necessarily the biggest winner.
So we had the Kansas City Chiefs obviously, coming out on top. The Kansas City Chiefs were not favored to win the game. So they had longer odds, so the books are paying out more for the Chiefs winning. The majority of the money was on the Chiefs at most sportsbooks. And then you also had that game go to overtime. Well, the bet for the total points scored was 47, just about maybe 46.5 depending on when you got it. And that's where the game ended was 47. So a lot of the bets started cashing as we got into overtime.
Interesting stat coming out of Macquarie. Chad Beynon over there doing some great research on the gambling stocks, saying he thinks the hold rate, so what the companies take away, the casinos take away was minus 4%. So they likely came away actually probably losing money last night. But it could still be a giant customer acquisition moment and still be positive overall for the stocks, he wrote, which is interesting.
PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: You know, I love talking about this industry. Once opaque, illegal industry that we couldn't ever really talk about, now we have numbers, we have real businesses kind of going into this. And you mentioned that whole overtime thing, I mean just talk about-- I think ESPN talked about BetMGM was having a hard time with all those overs being hit in the overtime, not just, like you said, the player prop-- player props, as well as the game over.
And you know, it's yeah, it's a tough night for them, but again it's a great night for sports betting and how many new customers we're seeing how easy it is to bet on your app and how easy it is to create your own parlay and all these different things and learning what the hell a parlay is.
I mean, this is all bullish for that industry. I think it's just all a big win for FanDuel, DraftKings, et cetera, BetMGM, whoever can operate in the largest scale online I think is just going to be bananas for them for the next 10 years or so.
ALEXANDRA CANAL: And like you're saying, Josh, customer acquisition. If you win a big bet, you're probably going to bet again.
JOSH SCHAFER: You want people to win much.
ALEXANDRA CANAL: You want people to win.
JOSH SCHAFER: If you have people betting for the first time, you want them to win, right?
ALEXANDRA CANAL: And the sportsbooks had a really solid January, so likely this won't affect them too much, financially, so.
JOSH SCHAFER: We need, Pras, to pick a better parlay for us next time.
ALEXANDRA CANAL: I know. I owe Pras five bucks.
PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: You know, our legs worked actually.
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