David Purdum, ESPN
A new twist on an old bet has taken sports betting in the United States by storm.
Same-game parlays, or SGPs, have emerged as not only one of the most popular bets on the board for bettors but also one of the most profitable for bookmakers.
In last year’s Super Bowl, 31% of bets placed before the game kicked off were same-game parlays at BetRivers, Barstool and other U.S. sportsbooks powered by Kambi, an international sports betting platform provider. At sportsbook PointsBet, 22% of all bets placed on the Super Bowl were SGPs. Both companies were anticipating even more Super Bowl SGPs this year. Not bad for something that sportsbooks in the U.S. only began accepting a few years ago.
Parlays have been a staple of American sports betting for more than 100 years. They combine multiple bets into one. A three-leg parlay, for example, features three picks. To win the maximum payout, each of the legs on your parlay must be successful. When the book builds in its margin, the max payout turns out to be less than your actual chances of hitting each of your picks on your parlay.
Historically, parlays were required to include bets from multiple games. Las Vegas sportsbooks refused to accept parlays that included events from one game for decades. You weren’t allowed, for example, to build a parlay on the favorite to cover a big point spread and the score to go over the total from the same game, because of the correlation of both outcomes. Old-school bookmakers, hindered by technology of the times, were afraid that the margins built into their parlay payout odds were not wide enough to account for any correlation.
“Not only did we not have the technology to automatically adjust prices, we also didn’t have the know-how,” said Art Manteris, who ran the sportsbooks at Caesars Palace and the Las Vegas Hilton, among others, during a 40-year bookmaking career in Nevada. “Today’s systems have the ability to analyze the data in real time automatically. Old-school bookmakers just couldn’t do that. If you have the math and the ability to adjust, like they have today, it can be very lucrative.”
How lucrative? In 2022, New Jersey sportsbooks won $450.4 million off $2.4 billion in parlay bets, 61% more than the total amount won on straight bets, according to revenue numbers from the state’s Division of Gaming Enforcement.
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