As the hours tick down towards Super Bowl 50, the betting line continues to rise in favor of the Carolina Panthers over the Denver Broncos.
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Thanks to the fact that the Panthers were blowing out the Cardinals in the NFC Championship Game relatively early, sportsbooks got a big jump on the betting lines for the Super Bowl. Carolina was opened as a 3.5-point favorite, a number which was almost immediately bet up to -4. There were points during that game that the Broncos were available at +4.5, but that line was also immediately set backwards to 4.
That's why it was a little surprising to see the spread actually open up at 4.5 instead of just a flat 4 when the number went mainstream on Sunday night. Bettors had clearly shown that Carolina -4 was the right number at the time, though after a few days of analyzing things, for the most part, all of the betting action has been on one side in this game.
All of a sudden on Tuesday, the line really started to shift upwards for the Panthers. There were a lot of heavy bets reported in Las Vegas on the NFC champs, and there really was little choice but to move the line from -4.5 up to -5 and ultimately all the way to -6. BookMaker's line held at 4.5 for quite a while, as it was one of the last sportsbooks to make the move from -5 up to -5.5 on Tuesday.
On Wednesday morning, there was yet another mini-surge on the Panthers to send this line up to -6, which is where it sits as of Thursday night. Some sportsbooks in Las Vegas have dabbled with the idea of moving this line to -6.5, but experienced bettors know that this could be a huge half-point in this game.
The Super Bowl is historically quite the close encounter, and points tend to be incredibly valuable. Four of the last five Super Bowls have been decided by six points or fewer, including last year's 28-24 win for the Patriots over the Seahawks.
Sportsbooks are setting themselves up for a potential nightmare as the days wear on towards the Super Bowl. Carolina is still garnering almost 80 percent of the bets at BookMaker, and several books in Vegas have reported over 70 percent of the actual money is coming in on the Panthers.
History will tell you that that will level out, though. For a game like this with this magnitude, betting will ultimately come in on both sides and will flatten out eventually. The problem is trying to figure out where that line will finally settle.
If the Panthers get kicked up to -6.5, there's a chance that Denver bettors will pound that number back down. If that turns out to be the case, if the Panthers end up winning this game by either five or six points, it could legitimately be a catastrophe for bettors. With an estimated $5 billion set to be wagered on this 60 minutes of football, it's entirely reasonable that sportsbook losses could be wagered in hundreds of millions of dollars if the they have to pay out on both sides of this bet. We've seen this happen before with Super Bowls, but we've never seen anything like what is very possible, albeit not incredibly probable at Super Bowl 50.
BookMaker offers play-by-play betting odds for live sporting events every day! The user-friendly wagering interface on your smartphone provides an easy way to place bets on the go. Mobile betting lines are updated by the minute, so click here to start gambling on thrilling live action at BookMaker Sportsbook! The matchup between the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos will take place Sunday, February 7, 2016, at 6:30 p.m. ET at Levi's Stadium. Super Bowl 50 will be televised on CBS.
