Ranker Bets on the Super Bowl
After the Supreme Court struck down laws that banned most state-authorized sports gambling back in 2018, the legal gambling industry has exploded in popularity. The country has been rapidly reintroducing itself to the world of sports betting through apps like ESPN BET and DraftKings. But any bettor who returned to the practice for the first time since it was largely banned in 1992 would have a hard time recognizing the practice today.
The days of chalkboards and gut feelings are gone, at least for professional sportsbooks. While there’s still certainly a good deal of human expertise involved in the setting of odds for various games, it’s largely coming from statisticians and data scientists rather than bookies and handicappers. Algorithms trained on decades worth of data have the largest say in how much a given bet will pay off.
But how do these data-driven odds compare with the gut feelings of regular sports fans? That’s the question we set out to answer ahead of the Super Bowl, the betting industry’s peak event.
On January 18, back when eight NFL teams were still in contention for the championship, we looked at which five teams had the best chance of winning the Super Bowl according to ESPN BET, ESPN’s cutting-edge branded online sportsbook. We compared those teams with the Top 5 on our Who Will Win Super Bowl LVII In 2024? list to see just how differently the professionals and the fans felt about each team’s odds.
What are the Odds?
Before we start analyzing, a caveat: we’re aware that a lot more goes into the calculation of betting odds than just the probability of one team winning and another one losing. But since probable outcome is still the primary factor behind the odds given by sportsbooks like ESPN BET, we hope you’ll come along for the ride with us as we compare these results.
The first thing we notice looking at these results is that they’re nearly identical! Both Ranker voters and the oddsmakers at ESPN BET ranked the San Francisco 49ers as most likely to win, the Baltimore Ravens as second-most likely, and the Kansas City Chiefs as fourth-most likely. The only difference between the two Top 5s is that their respective #3 and #5 spots are swapped — Ranker voters named the Detroit Lions as the third-most likely winner, while ESPN BET picked the Buffalo Bills.
The second thing we noticed is that these rankings correspond pretty closely to the results of the games that took place the weekend after they were recorded. After the four games that made up the NFL Divisional rounds, the 49ers, Ravens, Lions, and Chiefs all emerged victorious. So Ranker’s Top 5 did slightly better than ESPN BET’s, but that’s understandable — ESPN BET is a sportsbook, after all. It could be that they were hoping to offset pessimism about Buffalo’s chances, given the team’s reputation as a cursed franchise.
As confident as we are that Ranker voters are true NFL fanatics with incredible instincts, it’s possible they ranked the Chiefs over the Bills because of a bias. According to Ranker Insights, fans of the 49ers are around twice as likely to also support the Chiefs than they are the Bills. Because many voters on the list are bullish on the 49ers, it could be that home team bias trickled down and affected voters’ assessments of the Chiefs and Bills. Then again, when you’re right, you don’t have to explain yourself!
In the end, the mistake everybody seems to have made was underestimating the Kansas City Chiefs. They’ll be facing off against the 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII, despite being ranked #4 by both ESPN BET and Ranker voters. Appropriately enough, this year’s big game will be held in Las Vegas. Soon we’ll see whether the results prove our readers right, or if they prove them wrong by bringing a second consecutive championship trophy to Kansas City.