This NFL season was bad for sportsbooks. Will the Super Bowl be any better?

The Detroit Lions beat the San Francisco 49ers in a December 30 game that cost sportsbooks big.

Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

This NFL season has been bad for sportsbooks, mostly because gamblers kept winning.Betting favorites largely came out on top during the season.In Super Bowl 2025, an Eagles win against the Chiefs in a high-scoring game could hit sportsbooks’ revenue.

Americans are expected to legally bet $1.4 billion on the Super Bowl this year, but the game might not be a windfall for sports-betting companies.

This NFL season was pretty bad for sportsbooks, mostly because gamblers kept winning. Betting favorites largely came out on top during the season, particularly in December.

Casual bettors tend to put their money on the favorites, so sports betting companies had to pay out.

“When favorites win, the public usually wins,” Chad Beynon, senior analyst at Macquarie, told Business Insider. “So in December, a lot of people won money.”

Take the final “Monday Night Football” game of the season between the Detroit Lions and the San Francisco 49ers. The Lions were favorites to win in almost every bet on the December 30 game, analysts at MoffettNathanson pointed out. Win they did. The final score of 40-34 also covered both bets on the 3.5-point spread and the over of 50.5 total points in the game, per MoffettNathanson.

“This MNF game is one of the most glaring examples of unfavorable sports outcomes, with almost every prop bet along with the game lines of the Lions as favorites and the over on total points all hitting,” MoffettNathanson wrote in a January report.

FanDuel owner Flutter said on January 7 that it expected US revenue for 2024 to be about $370 million lower because of this “period of very unfavorable US sports results.”

“The 2024/2025 NFL season to date has been the most customer friendly since the launch of online sports betting with the highest rate of favorites winning in nearly 20 years,” Flutter wrote in the announcement.

Some analysts, including Macquarie, also lowered their financial forecasts for publicly traded sports betting operators due to the very bad month.

The Eagles are favorites to win the Super Bowl

So, what does all this mean for the Super Bowl?

The Super Bowl is the most bet-on event of the year. It accounts for nearly 1% of the annual amount wagered in the industry, known as handle, according to estimates from the gambling industry research firm Eilers and Krejcik Gaming.

Nearly 80% of DraftKings Super Bowl bettors are expecting it to be a high-scoring game with over 48.5 points. And they’re leaning toward the Philadelphia Eagles to beat the Kansas City Chiefs, with 55% betting on an Eagles win. That’s per DraftKings as of Thursday afternoon.

“A bad outcome would be lots of points and the Eagles winning,” Beynon explained.

If the Eagles win in a high-scoring game, there are also lots of other proposition bets — will Travis Kelce score a touchdown? Will Jalen Hurts throw for 250 yards? — that could compound how “bad” the outcome actually is for US sportsbooks.

Betting operators are also hoping for an exciting game that people will stay engaged in. With in-play betting, people can place bets into the fourth quarter.

“You want an entertaining game,” Beynon said. “You want people to tune in until the end.”

The best-case scenario for sportsbooks as of now is a Chiefs win with under a 48-point total score.

That said, the Super Bowl is a huge opportunity — the biggest opportunity of the year — for sports betting to bring in casual bettors and try to keep them around. Sportsbooks are investing in marketing and promotions around the game. FanDuel, for example, is running a TV ad.

To that end, it’s not a long-term threat to the business for gamblers to win every once in a while.