Surely there are other factors that might help us better predict how long Gladys might sing.įor starters, the performance time of the anthem has changed as the Super Bowl has grown to become the unparalleled cultural phenomenon we now enjoy each year. So the total is correct so far as the average goes, but it also seems lazy.
I eliminated any anthems with trumpeters ( there were two) and then started timing the anthem from the moment the singer first started to sing and ended the timer after the completion of the first utterance of “brave.” 3 Using this methodology, the 40-year average of all national anthem singers 4 is 106.1 seconds, roughly in line with the total set by the books.
To find out, I went to Youtube and watched 40 Super Bowl national anthems from 1979 to 2018. 2 The implied probabilities being equal indicates that the book has no real opinion on the length of Gladys’s performance - they just want to take a percentage from each side of the wager and hope bettors will place their bets evenly on both.īut is Knight performing the anthem in over/under 107 seconds really close to a 50 percent proposition? Or is there evidence that might convince us that the oddsmakers got the probabilities wrong? (The implied probability on one offshore book is 58 percent that he will hit the over.)Īnother interesting wager is on the length of Gladys Knight’s rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Several offshore books have set the total for the anthem at 1 minute 47 seconds, and the implied odds for both the under and the over were set at one book at -115 - a 53.5 percent implied probability - on both sides. But there are also more exotic prop bets on things like whether Donald Trump will tweet more than six times during the game. This year there are the standard prop bets, like if the Patriots will score a touchdown in the first quarter (they never have in a Super Bowl), or if the Rams will rush for more than 127.5 yards (they averaged 143.3 yards per game in the regular season and the playoffs). The total amount bet on the Super Bowl 1 has risen from $40 million in 1991 to more than $158 million in 2018, and much of that growth has come from “props” or proposition bets.įor readers who aren’t degenerate gamblers, prop bets are wagers you can place on events during a game that don’t directly involve the final outcome.
Super Bowl LIII is not only about two of the league’s best offenses squaring off against one another - New England and Los Angeles - it’s also about America’s other favorite pastime: gambling.
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