The most successful American sports bettor ever believes the wrong team is favored in the Super Bowl.
William "Billy" Walters, a Las Vegas businessman and longtime influential bettor, says he's taking the underdog Kansas City Chiefs plus the points. It's the first time Walters, who for decades stayed out of the limelight, has released his Super Bet publicly.
"It's not going to be a big bet for me," Walters said in an interview with ESPN on Thursday in Las Vegas, ahead of the Super Bowl. "It's going to be a small bet, somewhere between $500,000 and a million bucks on the game."
Walters said the size of his bet reflects the edge he believes he has. He believes the Chiefs have advantages at quarterback, defense and kicker, the three most important positions and units in Super Bowls, in his eyes. His numbers have the Chiefs favored by a couple points, while the consensus Super Bowl line late in the week at sportsbooks was the San Francisco 49ers -2.
"I figure I've got about a 6% advantage, and that is my smallest bet," Walters said.
It's a significantly smaller edge than he had on the biggest Super Bowl bet of his career, approximately $6 million on the New Orleans Saints plus the points against the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV. Walters estimated he had an edge "north of 20%" on the underdog Saints, who upset Peyton Manning and Colts.
"I had the game pick 'em and I took [Saints plus] seven," he said, adding that it was the biggest edge on Super Bowl he ever had. "Earlier on when the numbers weren't as solid, back in the 80s and 90s, we had a lot of those kind of things. In the Super Bowl, I've never had one that big."
Walters said he will pay a little extra to buy the line up to Chiefs +3, "because these teams are equally matched, I think three is an important number here."