Super Bowl LVI Bets: How Sporttrade Will Allow You To Profit Off Your Closing Line Value

By Dan Koob

I love checking my crypto investments five or six times a day.

Why? Because there’s something thrilling about watching your investments rise and fall as the day barrels towards its conclusion.

Let’s not get it twisted- I won’t be a BTC millionaire anytime soon (is a Nantucket summer home too much to ask?) but the opportunity to make even marginal gains are enough to keep me coming back and adjusting my portfolio.

Go ahead and try replicating that experience in the sports betting industry. Believe me, it’s not out there.

Yet. 

A new type of sports betting app is coming soon…A sports betting “exchange” called Sporttrade.  Sporttrade will provide you the same opportunity to maximize your bankroll that you have in the investing and crypto spaces, even within its pre-game markets. 

How? Because Sporttrade will 1) never lock you out and 2) allow pregame trading - your hunches, angles and leans can actually make you money before the game even begins by leveraging “Winner” (Moneyline), spread, and totals outcomes. This is “directional” trading just like the stock market. 

Just like when you trade stocks or cryptos, your positions can fluctuate in value even before a game begins. We can follow those fluctuations by monitoring how prices change in the lead up to kickoff.

Before we look at this from a historical Super Bowl bets perspective, we’ll quickly dissect what makes a pre-game price move from its original position.

• The biggest factor is a change to key players. If a Quarterback or game-breaking Wide Receiver were to unexpectedly be ruled out for a game, you can expect a line movement away from that team and towards it’s opponent. The 2021 season saw one of the most extreme examples of this scenario (more on this in a moment). 

• Money is the second largest factor. If a line comes out that appears to be favoring a team too much, sharp bettors will jump on one of the sides and force the oddsmaker to adjust the line until the new line is interpreted as more balanced. 

Closing Live Value (or CLV) is a metric bettors use to analyze if they’ve made a good bet based on where the line is moving from the time you place a bet until the game starts. Positive CLV is the subject of many self aggrandizing tweets on the internet. You know what’s better than having a positive closing line value? 

Actually making money off of a positive CLV on Sporttrade.  Here’s an example:

Super Bowl 48 and Super Bowl 49 hold the distinction of carrying the largest pre-game line shifts in Super Bowl history, each with a significant change in prices ahead of the kickoff.

Super Bowl 48 saw the Denver Broncos open as a 1.5 point underdog but closed as a 2.5 point favorite to the Seattle Seahawks in a game that was so lopsided, Joe Buck later told Peyton Manning he wished he had a guest to interview to fill time during the 4 hours it was on television.

The Seahawks ran out to a 36-0 lead and ended up winning 43-8. 

Denver failed to cover by 37.5 points, but if you had jumped on the public sentiment that the Broncos were 1.5 points worse than Seattle when the lines originally came out, that ‘Denver +1.5’ trade originally would have been worth around $52 (where price is equal to probability) on Sporttrade.

What made that line shift 4 points over the next two weeks? I’m sure an enlightened question from an Elvis impersonator on Super Bowl Media Day played a large part. But once they became the betting favorite at -2.5, the 'Denver +1.5’ price would have appreciated to around $57. 

That’s upwards of a 9% price movement before you’ve even welcomed one guest to your Super Bowl party.

Would you take that in your crypto accounts? I would. 

But wait - there’s more. Here’s where it gets really interesting. 

The 2021 NFL season has provided the clearest example of how players missing games can immediately alter lines with bettors keeping a close eye on the names piling up on the NFL’s Covid lists. The most high profile example of this featured one of the league’s best players, Aaron Rodgers, testing positive mid-week before the Packers played the Chiefs in a marquee game.

His absence pushed the early Chiefs -1.5 line to Chiefs -7.5.

In a similar trading scenario where you jumped on ‘Chiefs -1.5’ early - the price of that trade would have appreciated from ~$52 per contract to $76 per contract once news of Rodgers positive test came out and moved the line to -7.5. 

That’s a 46% increase.

For a ‘Chiefs Winner’ trade (again, the same thing as a Moneyline bet), the price would have appreciated from $53.50 to $77.50.

Back to COVID- no one wishes any player will catch it, especially not before the biggest game of their lives. The negotiated changes in COVID testing/reporting between the NFL and NFLPA has rendered COVID absences moot during the playoffs, but the potential still exists for wild pregame fluctuations. 

And we’re already seeing some. Within the first hour of lines being posted for Super Bowl 56, the line began at Rams -3.5 before moving to 4 and -4.5. For the early part of the week, it settled back down at 4, but grabbing Rams -3.5 initially provided you with a good base of CLV (provided the public doesn’t overwhelmingly back Joe Burrow and the Bengals). 

At no time in betting history have you been able to maximize your bankroll before the National Anthem has been sung. Sporttrade will be uniquely positioned to change that. Stop betting, start trading.