Super Bowl Coin Toss: How to Bet on the Simplest Big Game Prop for Seahawks vs. Patriots

Super Bowl LX is around the corner, and the prop betting opportunities will begin before the first play with the opening coin toss.

Worried about how many passing yards Drake Maye will have or if Jaxon Smith-Njigba will catch the first touchdown? That’s on the back burner until the outcome of the Super Bowl coin toss is settled.

Is this seemingly juvenile market truly a 50/50, or is there an advantage at play? Here’s what you need to know to bet on the Super Bowl coin toss.

How to Pick the Winning Super Bowl Coin Toss

To understand a coin toss, we need to first acknowledge its anatomy. Yes, seriously.

A coin has two sides, meaning there are two options to pick from - head and tails. While it may seem as if both sides have an equal chance of turning the lucky side up, that isn’t the case.

The Stanford studies found that a coin has about a 51 percent chance of landing on the same side it started on. The sides of a coin also have different weights, meaning they have less pull down to earth, and the heavier side has a greater chance of landing on the bottom.

Super Bowl coins are usually commemorative, so instead of glancing down at Abraham Lincoln or George Washington, players will see the Super Bowl trophy or the NFL logo. These once again affect the weight distribution and skew the supposed “50-50” nature of the toss.

There are also a variety of factors on the toss that impact the result, including launch position, the force of the flip, number of rotations, air resistance, wind, and manufacturing differences. 

A perfectly-flipped coin without any wobble will land on the same side approximately 51 percent of the time. One that isn’t struck cleanly by the thumb will wobble and will offset the imbalances that make this an unequal proposition and actually make it more fair.  

So, a buff referee who never missed an arm day and strikes the coin cleanly will actually introduce a small level of bias. 

An older ref who was in college during the Ice Bowl will probably hit the coin with less ferocity, thereby making it more 50/50.

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Big Game Coin Toss Odds

Without a vig, sportsbook odds for a 50/50 proposition would be +100/+100. 

If the chances are 51/49 like studies show, then the betting odds should be -104/+104. 

Top sportsbooks offer different prices for the event. Some of them honor the 50/50 nature of the wager, while others maintain the vig to increase their hold. 

Just like all Super Bowl prop bets, comparing odds at various NFL betting sites against one another will help bettors find the best deals for their bets.

Super Bowl Coin Toss History

Has anyone ever told you that “tails never fails?” They’re right! Kind of.

Tails beat out heads 31-28 across 59 Super Bowls, giving it a 52.5 percent win rate (above the theoretical expectation). The Kansas City Chiefs also correctly called tails in Super Bowl LIX last February. 

The longest streak happened recently when tails turned up five times in a row from Super Bowl XLVII-LI. 

Heads’ longest consecutive streak is four Super Bowls.

Here’s where things get interesting: winning the coin toss is a kiss of death.

Teams that won the coin toss only went 27-32 (45.8 percent) in Super Bowls. Even worse, nine of the last 11 teams that won the Super Bowl coin toss found themselves holding their heads in their hands several hours later after losing the Big Game. 

Here’s a complete look at the history of the Super Bowl coin toss.

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