THE RAIDERS WON’T call Las Vegas their home for a couple of years yet, but they’re already causing a stir in the desert.
That’s because more bets have been placed on the silver and black to win the Super Bowl than any other team — including the defending champion New England Patriots who, on paper at least, got better this off-season.
While Tom Brady and company are still 3/1 favourites across most Vegas sportsbooks, the Raiders have seen their odds shorten from 20/1 to just 6/1 with punters believing they can build on last season — when they qualified for the playoffs for the first time since 2002.
According to ESPN, at William Hill’s 108 Nevada sportsbooks, the Raiders have attracted nearly twice as many bets to win the Super Bowl as any other team.
And a lot of Irish people expect the silver and black to be the Pats’ biggest challengers this year too, though the defending champions are the clear favourites.
“It’s the Patriots (4/1) by a reasonable distance despite the short price pre-season,” a spokesperson for Paddy Power told The42.
“Stakes on New England account for almost 50% of the overall turnover on our Super Bowl market. Oakland are second in bets and, after the Raiders (18/1), it’s distributed surprisingly evenly between the rest.
“Bizarrely, the Browns (200/1) have had four times the amount of bets struck on them to win Super Bowl LII than the Bengals! (33/1)”
Before his top receiver, Julian Edelman, was sidelined for the year, a lot of Irish punters were also backing the Patriots to follow-up last year’s Super Bowl win with a perfect season.
“The punters have indeed got stuck into 16-0 (30/1) and 19-0 (50/1) with over 250 bets placed between the two selections.
“These markets will be revised every week so if Brady and company put on a show, I’ll be expecting more punters to hop on board in early September.”
As for the NFC, the money is going on the New York Giants (9/1) — perhaps in light of Zeke Elliott’s suspension for the Cowboys — but Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott (14/1) still leads the MVP betting market with punters having seemingly no worries about any so-called sophomore slump.
Of course, we won’t know who is right or wrong until February but where’s you’re money headed this season?
Let us know in the comments section below.
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