Super Bowl Novelty Props: Betting Beyond the Final Score
Available in US
The one weekend the silliest bets take over
Once a year, the betting world briefly loses its mind, and I rather enjoy it. Super Bowl novelty props are wagers on outcomes that have nothing to do with the football itself, the colour of the Gatorade dumped on the winning coach, the result of the coin toss, the length of the national anthem. For one weekend, the most-bet game on earth sprouts a menu of bets so detached from the sport that calling them sports betting feels generous. They are, unmistakably, entertainment.
What makes novelty props worth writing about is precisely that they are not value bets, and pretending otherwise does readers a disservice. Every other piece I write is about finding an edge, comparing your read to a fair price and betting only when the maths favours you. Novelty props invert that entirely: there is no edge to find, because most of these outcomes are either pure chance or genuinely unknowable, and the prices are built to reflect that. Understanding them is about understanding why they are fun rather than profitable.
I am not here to spoil the party. Novelty props are a harmless and genuinely enjoyable part of the Super Bowl ritual, a way for casual viewers and serious bettors alike to have a small stake in the spectacle around the game. The only thing I want to puncture is the illusion that they are a smart bet. Enjoy them as entertainment, size them as entertainment, and never confuse them with the value-focused betting that the rest of the year is about.
What counts as a novelty prop
A novelty prop is a bet on something happening in or around the event that is not a football outcome. The classic example is the Gatorade colour, a wager on the hue of the liquid poured over the winning head coach during the celebration, which has become a Super Bowl betting tradition entirely divorced from anything on the field. The coin toss is another staple, a fifty-fifty bet on heads or tails before the game even begins. The national anthem length, the halftime show details, the colour of various objects, all sit in this category.
The defining feature is that these outcomes are unrelated to the sporting contest, which separates them sharply from the player props that make up serious betting. A receiving yards prop reflects a player’s performance in a measurable, analysable way; a Gatorade-colour prop reflects which flavour someone happens to grab in a moment of celebration. One can be projected with data and judgement; the other cannot be projected at all in any meaningful sense. The novelty prop is a bet on trivia and chance dressed in the clothing of sports betting.
It is worth distinguishing these from genuine player and game props, because the Super Bowl offers both. Alongside the silliness sit ordinary player props, passing yards, anytime touchdown scorer, the same markets available all season, which remain analysable bets. The novelty category is specifically the off-field, non-sporting outcomes. Knowing which is which matters, because the analytical approach that works on a player prop is useless on a coin toss, and applying value thinking to a novelty bet is a category error.
Examples and the odds behind them
Looking at how novelty props are priced reveals exactly why they are entertainment rather than opportunity. Take the coin toss: it is as close to a true fifty-fifty as betting offers, heads or tails on a fair coin. Yet the price you get is never a fair fifty-fifty, because the book builds in its margin, so each side pays slightly less than even money. On an outcome that is genuinely random, the house edge is the only certainty, and you are paying it for the privilege of a bet that no analysis can improve.
The Gatorade-colour market shows the other way novelty props are loaded. With many possible colours, the book posts a price for each, and the implied probabilities across all the options add up to well over 100 per cent, far more than the roughly 4.8 per cent overround on a tidy two-way prop at standard odds. The wider the menu of outcomes, the more margin the book can pack into the collective pricing, and novelty markets with many options carry some of the steepest margins anywhere. Player props already run a vig of 6 to 10 per cent and often higher; multi-outcome novelty props can dwarf that.
The pattern across all novelty props is the same: high margin attached to outcomes you cannot analyse. Whether the bet is a coin flip you cannot predict or a colour you cannot forecast, the book is charging a premium precisely because there is no information advantage available to anyone. That combination, no edge to find and a steep price to pay, is the mathematical signature of a bet built for fun rather than profit. The numbers themselves tell you these are not bets to take seriously as investments.
Why these are for fun, not profit
The honest verdict is that novelty props are entertainment with a price tag, and the smart way to treat them is exactly that. There is no edge available, because the outcomes are random or unknowable and the margins are steep, so no amount of research turns a Gatorade-colour bet into a value play. Anyone selling you a «system» for novelty props is selling you nothing, because the very thing that makes them fun, their detachment from analysable reality, is what makes them unbeatable as a serious bet.
That does not mean you should avoid them; it means you should size them honestly. A small stake on the coin toss or the Gatorade colour as part of enjoying the occasion is a perfectly reasonable bit of fun, the betting equivalent of buying a raffle ticket at a fete. The danger is only in treating them as anything more, staking meaningfully on outcomes you cannot influence or predict, or letting the novelty bets crowd out the genuine player props where actual judgement applies. Keep the stakes small and the expectations smaller. If you enjoy the more speculative, long-shot end of betting in general, it is worth understanding how those longer-horizon bets differ from quick-settling wagers, which I cover in player props versus player futures. Novelty props live at the most speculative extreme of all, and the only winning strategy is to bet them for the laugh, not the return.
Is the Gatorade colour really a bettable market in the UK?
Around the Super Bowl, yes, it is a long-standing novelty market that many books offer, including UK-licensed ones, as part of the spectacle. It is a wager on the colour of the liquid poured over the winning head coach during the celebration. It is genuinely a bet you can place, but it is entertainment rather than a value play, since the outcome cannot be analysed and the pricing across the many colour options carries a steep house margin.
Why do novelty props carry such high margin?
Because the book packs its edge into outcomes nobody can analyse. On a multi-outcome market like the Gatorade colour, the implied probabilities across all the options add up to well over 100 per cent, far more than the roughly 4.8 per cent overround on a standard two-way prop. The wider the menu of outcomes, the more margin the book can build into the collective pricing, which is why novelty markets with many options are among the steepest-priced bets anywhere.
Are coin-toss props pure luck?
Essentially, yes. The coin toss is as close to a true fifty-fifty as betting offers, heads or tails on a fair coin, with no information or analysis able to improve your chances. The price you get is never a fair fifty-fifty either, because the book builds in its margin, so each side pays slightly less than even money. On a genuinely random outcome, the house edge is the only certainty, which makes it a fun flutter rather than a smart bet.
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