Super Bowl Betting Impacted by Tech Issues

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers won big on Sunday, but gamblers hoping to back them — and cash out — faced widespread frustration.

Users of multiple popular sports betting apps were unable to place wagers as kickoff for Super Bowl 55 approached Sunday.

While FanDuel had outages in Michigan and Illinois, DraftKings, Penn National Gaming’s Barstool Sportsbook and BetRivers suffered widespread issues that continued well into the Big Game.

“It appears this outage was caused by a surge in traffic that caused problems for our backend provider,” a DraftKings spokesperson told Front Office Sports.

A person with knowledge of the situation told Front Office Sports that international betting technology firm Kambi had technical difficulties Sunday. Kambi counts DraftKings, Penn National and BetRivers as clients, according to its website.

Casual bettors should’ve taken a page out of Mattress Mack’s book and placed wagers ahead of Sunday. The notorious Houston gambler placed the biggest bet on the game — $3.46 million on Tampa +3.5 — when he landed in Colorado on Wednesday, where betting is legal.

Here are the other five biggest bets on Super Bowl 55, all million-plus-dollar tickets:

• $2.5M on Chiefs ML (-165) at BetMGM
• $2.3M on Bucs + 3.5 (-115) at BetMGM
• $1.16M on Chiefs ML (-155) at William Hill
• $1M on Bucs ML (+135) at BetMGM
• $1M teaser on Bucs +9 and Over 50

By kickoff, 59% of all betting tickets sided with Kansas City -3, and 60% backed the Chiefs moneyline.

Betting is legal in 21 U.S. jurisdictions (including Washington, D.C.), seven more than at the time of last year’s Super Bowl. An American Gaming Association survey estimated a record 7.6 million bets would be placed on the Super Bowl at online sportsbooks, 63% more than 2020.