Four minutes before the AFC championship game ended, the Stardust Hotel put up its line for Super Bowl XXXIII: Denver by 8.
Within two minutes professional gamblers had hammered the line, putting $20,000 on the Atlanta Falcons and knocking it down to 7.5. Ten minutes later, the line dropped to 7 as more "sharp money" came in for the Falcons, said Joe Lupo, race and sports book manager of the Stardust.
The Stardust, the first Nevada hotel to open a sports book in the mid-1970s, is always first to "hang the line" on sporting events, and hundreds of sports books across the state copy its actions. Also watched and copied is the line recommended by Las Vegas Sports Consultants, an oddsmaking firm. About 90 percent of the Nevada casinos use the service, said Joel Brewster, oddsmaker with the firm.
Lupo and Brewster are two of just a handful of oddsmakers who determine the point spread or line for the most-bet game in America.
Last year a record $77.3 million was wagered on the Super Bowl in Nevada sports books. Brewster expected Nevada sports books to take in $75 million to $80 million this year.
Aside from Oregon, which has a state lottery game based on NFL football, Nevada is the only state where it's legal to have a sports book.
But the millions bet in Nevada casinos are dwarfed by the billions bet illegally with big-time bookmakers, as well as Super Bowl party and office pools across the country. Estimates for the amount bet on the Super Bowl nationwide last year range from $3.75 billion to $7.7 billion.
The line Las Vegas sets is usually the same line used by illegal bookies as well as friends making a handshake $5 wager, said Roger Gros, senior editor of Casino Player Magazine, a national publication for the gaming industry. The Las Vegas line is generally what is published in most sports pages and "that is what everybody reads and that is their frame of reference," he said.
The line, or point spread, first became popular in the 1930s, according to a federal study on sports wagering by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission. The line enables bettors to place bets on teams with vastly different abilities.
"There are some that argue that the prevalence of the point spread has actually increased the popularity of some sports," according to that study, written by gambling commission deputy director John Shosky.
Norman Kelley, race and sports book manager for Sam's Town Casino in Las Vegas, said the line, once set, will move to attract equal money to both sides of the bet. For example, casinos would increase the point spread if more money comes in on the Broncos this year, he said.
There have been years in which casinos have not been able to move the line enough to attract equal bets and have lost money, he said.
But sometimes "the public will come in on one side and steam [bet] that side, and no matter where you move the line, they will keep steaming that side," he said.
The lines are first set by Las Vegas Sports Consultants, a company founded by famous oddsmaker Michael "Roxy" Roxborough in the early 1980s. Roxborough has since sold the company, but he remains a consultant, said LVSC oddsmaker Pete Korner.
On Jan. 17, the day of the AFC and NFC championship games, four oddsmakers watched the games while debating the possible point spread, Brewster said. Once the Falcons beat the Minnesota Vikings in the early game, the debate centered on what the line would be against the Denver Broncos or the New York Jets, Brewster said.
"If the Jets had won, I would have made them 2- to 2.5-point favorites," Brewster said. About five minutes before the end of the Broncos-Jets game, the four oddsmakers settled on an initial line of Denver by 8.5.
"We looked at a lot of things: how the teams had done, Super Bowl history. The fact Denver is a defending champion was a factor," Brewster said. With four minutes left to play, Las Vegas Sports Consultants informed Lupo at the Stardust that it had set a line of 8.5.
Lupo did not put up the Las Vegas Sports Consultants' line right away, but rather took into account several factors, including other oddsmakers the Stardust uses, as well as his own opinion.
"We had probably five different numbers we took into account," he said. One major factor was that a lot of "sharp, late money" had come in on the Atlanta-Minnesota game that morning and that the professional bettors had won their Falcons bets.
With that in mind, Lupo put up a line of Denver by 8, and the professional gamblers soon moved it down to 7. For the first week of Super Bowl betting, most Nevada casinos had a point spread that stayed solidly at 7 or 7.5, a fact that pleased Lupo.
"You don't want a line that moves a lot that will lose value every time the number moves," he said.
