The start of the Super Bowl will be determined by the pre-game coin toss. We’ve got the entire history of the event and what it means for prop bet bettors.
The Super Bowl is the biggest game of the year and with it comes the most notable coin toss. The coin toss determines who starts with the ball in every NFL game, but never is the spotlight brighter than during the Super Bowl.
Coin toss results do not guarantee anything, but that doesn’t make the results any less interesting. And given what the coin toss can mean for sports betting, people will look for every edge they can get — even in something that’s relatively 50/50 like the coin toss.
Sports betting has been legal in Nevada since before the Super Bowl era, but for most of the rest of the country, sports betting did not start to get legalized until 2018 after the Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act. However, even though sports betting was not legal, plenty of people visited offshore books or their local bookie to place Super Bowl wagers.
Prop bets have grown in popularity since William “The Refrigerator” Perry’s “odds to score a touchdown” kicked off the prop bet frenzy. For the coin toss, you can bet on the result of the toss, which team will win it, and if the winner of the coin toss will go on to win the game.
Looking back through history up through Super Bowl 58, the coin toss has resulted in heads 28 times and tails 30 times. The choice is essentially a 50/50 proposition, but one study at the Stanford Mathematics and Statistics departments showed a coin toss is actually more like a 51/49 proposition based on whatever side is up before the flip. The study did assume no bouncing, and in the Super Bowl, the referee lets the coin hit the ground.
Headed into Super Bowl 59, the last two years saw the Chiefs win the coin toss and go on to win the Super Bowl. Prior to that, the coin toss winner lost the Super Bowl eight straight years. Through the first 58 Super Bowls, the coin toss winner has won the game 25 times and lost the game 33 times.
Here’s a complete list of the Super Bowl coin toss history, including heads or tails, the coin toss winner, and the game winner.
