Nevada Super Bowl Betting Handle Hits 10-Year Low In Seahawks-Patriots Snoozer

By Bill Speros

Feb 10th, 2026 12:05 PM EDT

This was a Super Bowl that Las Vegas would like to forget. The Nevada Super Bowl Betting Handle hit a 10-year low. The state's sportsbooks survived Super Bowl 60 — but only because the house always finds a way. Seattle clocked New England 29-13 in a snoozer that was over early in the 4th quarter.

A plodding, low-scoring game, a star-power vacuum, and a Strip that hasn’t exactly been bursting with tourists lately, pushed back on Nevada’s Super Bowl betting numbers. The result: the weakest Super Bowl handle in a decade. And another reminder that Vegas no longer owns this holiday the way it once did.

The books stayed profitable. The vibes did not. And in a discouraging sign, the Seahawks are favored to repeat in 2027 Super Bowl odds.

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Nevada Handle Slides to Decade-Low Territory

Nevada sportsbooks reported $133.8 million in Super Bowl handle across the state’s 186 licensed books. That marks an 11.7% decline year over year from 2025’s $151.6 million.

That drop looks even uglier when stacked against the 2024 Super Bowl in Las Vegas. That game generated nearly $190 million in wagers. This year’s total came up roughly $56 million short of that high-water mark.

More telling: this was the lowest Super Bowl handle since 2016, when bettors wagered $132.5 million on Broncos–Panthers. Even during pandemic-restricted Super Bowl LV in 2021, Nevada books still cleared $136 million.

The Game Was a Snoozer — and Bettors Checked Out Early

If sportsbooks could script a Super Bowl to kill betting momentum, this would be it.

Seattle’s 9–0 halftime lead set the tone for a game that never found an offensive rhythm. Touchdowns — the lifeblood of live betting and player props — were in short supply early. That matters in today’s wagering ecosystem.

Live betting thrives on chaos. This game delivered containment.

Without explosive plays, bettors had fewer reasons to jump back in after kickoff, dragging down in-game volume and prop action — two of the fastest-growing revenue streams for modern sportsbooks.

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No Star QBs, No Casual Money

Super Bowl LX also suffered from a simple reality: casual bettors bet stars, not schemes.

A matchup featuring Sam Darnold and Drake Maye doesn’t generate the same betting gravity as Patrick Mahomes, Tom Brady, or even Jalen Hurts. Star quarterbacks bring in recreational money, novelty bets, and impulse wagers — all of which were noticeably muted this year.

For Nevada books, fewer casual bettors meant fewer parlays, fewer props, and fewer late-night “why not?” wagers at the counter.

Vegas Tourism Lag Didn’t Help

The timing couldn’t have been worse.

Las Vegas has been navigating softening tourism trends, driven by higher travel costs and tighter consumer spending. Unlike 2024 — when the Super Bowl itself turned the Strip into a weeklong betting carnival — Super Bowl LX lacked the destination pull that traditionally juices Nevada’s handle.

Fewer visitors means fewer sportsbook foot soldiers. And Super Bowl betting in Nevada has always been powered by tourists, not locals.

A National Market That No Longer Needs the Strip

Nevada’s edge keeps shrinking.

With legal sports betting available in 39 states plus Washington, D.C., bettors no longer need to fly to Vegas to get action down. The convenience of mobile wagering continues to erode Nevada’s monopoly on marquee betting events.

Adding another wrinkle: prediction markets, including platforms like Kalshi, offered Super Bowl outcome contracts in states where traditional sports betting is still illegal, such as California. The rise of prediction markets in California - including Kalshi, Robinhood, DraftKings Predictions, FanDuel Predicts, and Fanatics Markets, clearly siphoned off potential handle that once had nowhere else to go.

The Books Still Won — Thanks to Hedges and the Result

Despite the light volume, sportsbooks avoided disaster.

Nevada operators posted $9.9 million in net revenue, good for a 7.4% hold. That’s down sharply from last year’s $22.1 million and 14.6% hold — but green is green.

Seattle’s 29-13 win covered the spread and stayed under the total, while sportsbooks benefited from large hedge bets on the Patriots placed by bettors holding lucrative Seahawks futures.

Circa Sports confirmed a $1.1 million Patriots bet from a player protecting an $8.1 million Seattle payout. BetMGM also reported multiple six-figure Patriots wagers. When New England lost, the house scooped up those hedges and moved on. Several big-money wagers were hedge plays against high-number futures bets that saw the Patriots (60-1) and Seahawks (80-1) as massive longshots before the season.

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About the Author

Bill Speros

More About Bill

Bill is an award-winning journalist and editor whose career includes stops at USA Today Sports Network / Golfweek, Cox Media, ESPN, Orlando Sentinel and Denver Post. He's been covering the North American regulated gambling market for almost a decade and has his finger on the pulse for all industry news involving sportsbooks, online casinos, prediction markets and more. Bill placed his first bet at age 11, and his first job was as a paper boy delivering the Boston Herald and Boston Globe. By age 16, he was playing blackjack and getting comped drinks on the Las Vegas Strip. When home, his weekend rotation included trips to Wonderland Greyhound Park and Raynham Greyhound Park. After 30 years in legacy media, Bill wedded his passion for journalism and storytelling with a lifetime of wagering by working at Gambling.com.

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