The Top 5 Super Bowl Victories Ranker Readers Came Closest to Predicting
The American sports betting industry experienced massive growth in 2021, with an eye-popping total of $52.7 billion bet over the course of the year. The legalization of gambling on sports in 11 states and heavy spending by popular sportsbooks like DraftKings and FanDuel have both contributed to this massive expansion, and thanks to some wildly exciting and widely viewed playoff games over the last month, we can expect NFL viewership to help continue the trend into 2022. With this NFL postseason proving even more unpredictable and more profitable than usual, we at Ranker had to ask ourselves: how effective are our readers in predicting the outcome of the Super Bowl?
Over the years, we’ve regularly asked our audience to vote for the teams they think are most likely to win the biggest trophy in professional football. Ahead of Super Bowl LVI on February 13, we’re taking a look at NFL championships past to see which ones our readers came closest to predicting — the higher the game is on our list, the more accurate our voters’ predictions were. Read on to find out what the results were, and what they might mean about the outcome of Super Bowl LVI.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
#1: Super Bowl LIII (2018-2019)
Super Bowl Winner: The New England Patriots
List Winner: The New England Patriots
Winner’s List Position: #1
For most of the 21st century, betting on the Patriots to win the Super Bowl was like buying an “E” on Wheel of Fortune: it was no guarantee of success, but it was pretty darn close.
Still, Ranker voters did show some prescience here: the Patriots went 11-5 during the 2018 regular season, a poorer record than both the LA Chargers and the Kansas City Chiefs. NFL fans were correct in guessing that quarterback Tom Brady, who ranks #1 on our list of the Best Quarterbacks Of All Time (824K votes) and #3 on our list of The Best Football Players Ever (942K votes), would win his seventh Super Bowl with the Patriots.
Brady may be a divisive figure among NFL commentators and analysts, but Ranker voters generally feel positively about him — the quarterback enjoys positive overall sentiment from football fans on Ranker in every region of the US. His strongest approval rating is in the Northeast, where he is viewed positively by 71% of voters.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
#2: Super Bowl LIV (2019-2020)
Super Bowl Winner: The Kansas City Chiefs
List Winner: The San Francisco 49ers
Winner’s List Position: #3
Close, but no cigar for NFL fans on Ranker in 2020: voters picked the 49ers to take home the Lombardi trophy that year, and while San Francisco did make it to the Super Bowl, they ultimately fell to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Voters weren’t too far off in ranking the Chiefs as the third most likely team to win it all in Super Bowl LIV, and they came even closer in naming eventual winner Patrick Mahomes the #2 candidate to win that year’s Super Bowl MVP trophy (their top choice was 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa). The Kansas City quarterback is quite popular among Ranker readers, boasting a 71% approval rating among all voters — that’s 11% better than Tom Brady’s overall rating on Ranker. He’s ranked #1 on The Best NFL Quarterbacks of the 2010s (29K votes), despite having played during only three years of that decade.
Photo: Brooklyn Nine-Nine, NBC/Fox
#3: Super Bowl L (2015-2016)
Super Bowl Winner: The Denver Broncos
List Winner: The Carolina Panthers
Winner’s List Position: #3
Ranker voters also put the ultimate winner of the 50th Super Bowl at #3 back in 2016, picking the NFC champion Carolina Panthers over the Denver Broncos. Although the distance between voters’ pick and the eventual victor is the same as it was for Super Bowl LIV, the Broncos got a lower percentage of upvotes (41%) than the Chiefs in 2020 (48%), making the 2016 prediction slightly less accurate.
The Broncos won with the help of quarterback Peyton Manning in his 18th and final NFL season. Manning ranks high not just on sports-related Ranker lists, but celebrity ones, as well: he’s #2 on the Best Quarterbacks Of All Time and #22 on our list of Celebrities Who Should Run For President (719K votes). We’re guessing most of the support for Manning on the latter list is coming from rightward-leaning voters, because according to Insights, fans of Manning are 4X more likely to also approve of outspoken conservative celebrities like Nancy Reagan, Ben Stein, Gary Sinise, and Chuck Norris.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
#4: Super Bowl LII (2017-2018)
Super Bowl Winner: The Philadelphia Eagles
List Winner: The Kansas City Chiefs
Winner’s List Position: #4
Ranker voters were two years too early in predicting the Kansas City Chiefs would win their first Super Bowl since 1970, putting the Chiefs at #1 and the eventual winners, the Philadelphia Eagles, down at #4. The fact that voters were slightly less precise with their prediction than in other years is forgivable, given that the Eagles were underdogs throughout the playoffs and staged upset victories over the two previous winners, the Falcons and the Patriots, to win their first Super Bowl championship ever.
Another reason the Eagles were ranked relatively low might be the fact that the team is less than broadly popular among Ranker voters. Most sports teams don’t enjoy high approval ratings on Insights — people aren’t very likely to approve of any team besides their own, after all — but the Eagles are particularly disliked, with just 39% of voters approving. Even in their home region of the Northeast, the Eagles have only 45% approval. The hate for the birds may have more to do with their hometown than the franchise itself, given that Philadelphia was voted #1 on Cities With The Worst Sports Fans (17K votes).
Photo: Private Practice, ABC
