Taylor Swift kisses Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce after the AFC Championship game against the Ravens in Baltimore, on Jan. 28.Julio Cortez/The Associated Press
The punters of Las Vegas have no shortage of Super Bowl gambling options for the game in their hometown this Sunday. They can bet on simple matters, such as which team wins the coin toss, which player will score a touchdown or the point totals in any quarter. Or they can put money on a raft of more esoteric outcomes, such as whether the first player to score a touchdown sports a jersey number higher or lower than 19.5, or whether the Montreal Canadiens will, on Feb. 11, score a greater number of goals than Brock Purdy throws touchdown passes for the San Francisco 49ers.
What they can’t do, however, is place bets on what may be the biggest event off the field of the much-watched spectacle: the presence of Taylor Swift, whose romance with Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce has already bent the arc of American popular culture.
Anyone with a burning desire to bet on Ms. Swift – on, say, the colour of her clothes, how frequently television producers pan the camera her way, or even whether she will receive a game-time marriage proposal – will have to travel a few thousand kilometres from Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas and across an international border, to Ontario.
Las Vegas may be a gambler’s paradise, and Super Bowl betting may eclipse the wagers on all other sports events, but Nevada’s gaming laws place tight guardrails around bookmakers, generally restricting them to bets about what takes place on the field and what can be verified in a box score.
Not so in Ontario. So long as the product is certified by a testing laboratory – which evaluates the integrity of a gaming system – “you can take bets on almost anything,” said Danielle Bush, a Toronto lawyer with McCarthy Tétrault who is co-lead of the firm’s national gaming, lottery and esports group.
That gives Ontario gamblers and bookmakers a freedom their Nevada counterparts don’t enjoy. They can bet on events such as last year’s Toronto’s mayoral by-election, or the box-office results for Barbie versus Oppenheimer, or the outcome of awards shows including the Grammys and the Oscars.
So it’s not surprising the Super Bowl has brought an outpouring of creative wagers.
FanDuel Canada has four Taylor Swift bets open only to people in the province. Will Mr. Kelce propose to Ms. Swift? Will the game’s most valuable player – whoever that is – mention Ms. Swift in his speech? Will she once again wear a Kristin Juszczyk design, such as the custom jacket she sported last month? Will Kansas City coach Andy Reid mention Ms. Swift in his podium interview or speech?
At Toronto-headquartered theScore Bet, a section of “Taylor Swift Super Bowl Specials” is accepting wagers on whether the singer will be shown during the national anthem – or more than 5.5 times during CTV’s broadcast of the game. Bet99 has introduced similar wagers, in addition to a series on another musician, halftime show artist Usher. Bettors can gamble on whether Usher will play more or fewer than 8.5 songs, as well as the specific first and final tracks he will perform.
“The Super Bowl transcends mere sports,” said Andre Bewerungen, the Bet99 head of sportsbook, in a statement. And “with Taylor Swift making waves across the media landscape, it became literally an obligation for us at BET99 to open betting opportunities around her and Travis Kelce.”
Sports betting has become a major industry. Last years, wagers exceeded US$100-billion in the United States for the first time, and surpassed $3-billion in Ontario. For bettors, the Super Bowl has no equal. This year alone, the American Gaming Association expects it to attract US$23.1-billion in betting.
That will include many billions of dollars placed on proposition bets, known as “props.” These wagers – on events not directly tied to a game’s outcome – have grown into a major component of gambling. At the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook, props make up 68 per cent of the handle, or the total money spent on wagers, which means more action “on the propositions than the game itself these days,” bookmaker Jay Kornegay said in an interview.
He is known as a booster of props, which he began to promote in the early 1990s as a way to keep gamblers interested in blowout Super Bowl games. “We came up with propositions that wouldn’t be decided until the second half,” he said. “And it took off like wildfire.” A printed copy of this year’s SuperBook Super Bowl props fills 19 double-sided pages.
But Mr. Kornegay holds no envy for the freedom Ontario bookmakers have to take wagers on off-field maters, including those involving Taylor Swift.
“When you can’t have concrete rules on how a bet is graded you’re setting yourself up for, you know, heartburn, misery, long battles,” he said. Take theScore, which is accepting wagers on the predominant colour of Ms. Swift’s top at kickoff (excluding jacket). The options are red (the favourite), white, black, yellow and any other. It’s not hard to imagine how a pop star’s wardrobe choice would defy those simple categories.
“What if she wears pink with a purple scarf, and then she has like red sleeves or something?” Mr. Kornegay asked. He also dislikes wagers that involve information known in advance, such as anything involving the halftime show.
“Thousands probably know, because of rehearsals, what song Usher is going to sing first,” he said.
“Any type of proposition that either somebody knows, or there’s not an official result, is not something that we should offer wagering on.”
Nevada’s regulations limit wagers to professional sports with a governing body, collegiate athletics, the Olympics and a few other types of events. Anything else must be approved by the chair of the Nevada Gaming Commission, using criteria that include a verifiable outcome that “would be generated by a reliable and independent process.”
The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario said in a statement that provincial regulations protect bettors by, “including a requirement that the outcome of the event being bet on can be documented and verified.” The commission did not respond to a question about the volume of complaints it has received from novelty props.
Provincial sportsbook operators dismissed such concerns.
BetMGM Ontario, for example, has opened for wagers on the singing of The Star-Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl, and whether it will exceed 90.5 seconds. “For the anthem, the rules state that timing begins from the first word to the last word,” spokesman John Ewing explained.
Traditional betting markets attract the lion’s share of wagers, he said. But the BetMGM Ontario prop on whether Mr. Kelce will mention Ms. Swift “is still popular, especially considering it is only available in Ontario.” (Ninety-three per cent have wagered “yes.”)
In Nevada, however, the state has resisted calls to ease some gambling restrictions. Demands for more betting have even come from local legislators, who occasionally suggest the state, for example, allow wagers on presidential elections, said A.G. Burnett, a Reno-based gaming attorney who chaired the Nevada Gaming Control Board from 2012 to 2017.
For now, the answer is no. It’s a question of “keeping the presidential election sort of sacred,” Mr. Burnett said.
Las Vegas may revel in its reputation as the Wild West, but its gambling laws, Mr. Burnett said, have been written for a reason.
“We’ve got 50 years of sports-betting experience. So what you see in these regulations are likely the result of mistakes that were made, or problems that occurred and were then fixed.”
He understands the appeal of prop bets, such as those on Ms. Swift, which are “viewed as an exciting mode of wagering.”
But he also wonders how, exactly, one can properly assess odds on such items.
“I tend to think of the oddsmakers as magicians, the really good ones,” he said. “But something that’s more nebulous and subjective – how do you put odds on that? I think a lot of times, you just make it up as you go.”