We talked about one solid betting position on the Who’s Superbowl halftime show earlier, and sportsbooks are offering other betting opportunities on it as well. It may not constitute a large part of your Superbowl betting, but the halftime show offers some really good value and should provide easy winners for us. As before, Bodog has the widest selection of prop bets so if you don’t have an account there go get one!

One of my associates is a very successful and experienced sports betting ‘wise guy’ and I’ve asked him to share some expertise on this type of bet.  He’s very good at all of the usual sports–as well as horse racing–but he became well known in the offshore sportsbook world with his domination of non-sport prop bets.  He’s been called alternately a ‘genius’ and ‘the Billy Walters of non-sport prop bets’.  Sportsbooks used to offer a lot more bets of this type, but whenever they did he’d destroy them.  He’s made a killing on things you wouldn’t usually think of betting on–beauty pageants, movie box office receipts, celebrity boxing and reality TV.  He’s also done well on Superbowl props that aren’t related to the game itself.  He said I could use his name but I’m not as I don’t want every sportsbook in the world to read this post and immediately cancel his account.   He gave these thoughts on this type of bet:

Sportsbooks used to offer a lot more of these non-sport prop bets and I guess I played a big part in changing their mind.  A few years ago they’d put up lines on all sorts of things at reasonably high limits thinking that players wouldn’t approach them seriously.  I really got started in this type of betting when they had that first ridiculous Celebrity Boxing show with people like Vanilla Ice, Danny Bonaduce and Tonya Harding.  I was talking to a friend in Los Angeles who said that he went to the taping of the first show.  The only thing is that all of the sportsbooks had lines on it–I guess they either didn’t know it was taped or figured that no one would actually know the taping results.  So I knew who was going to win and bet it everywhere I could.

The last big killing I made was during the last season of “The Sopranos”.  Books were posting odds on the first character to ‘get whacked’ and I had some connections in the HBO legal department.  A couple of the books canceled my bet but most paid.  They’re a lot more cautious now both in what they take action on and the limits they’ll accept.  My best Superbowl betting experience of this sort was when U2 played the halftime show in 2002.  A number of sportsbooks offered odds on which songs they’d play, as well as which song they’d open their set with.  That one was easy–U2 was touring to support their album “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” at that point and they were opening all of their live shows with “It’s A Beautiful Day”.   I figured that they’d open their halftime show set with that song and they did.  Of course having someone at the soundcheck on Friday afternoon didn’t hurt either.

I wish sportsbooks would offer more bets like this but I definitely understand why they don’t.  Bookmakers have plenty of experience with sports and can usually set a sharp line.  They don’t have the same frame of reference or experience with entertainment type prop bets.   They’re also getting better at paying attention to a lot of the same sources I get information from.  For example, this year a few books were taking action on what songs The Who would play at halftime.  Pete Townshend gave a possible set list in a Billboard magazine interview, and they all took it down.  At this point, you really have to pay attention and move fast when they offer bets on anything other than traditional sports.

So with the bets we’re giving you on the Superbowl halftime show you need to take the advice of the best in the business. Move fast and bet them while you can! In the next post, we’ll give you another good betting position from Bodog on The Who’s halftime performance.