After heavy action on Eagles, spread is moving back toward Chiefs

The Super Bowl is still a week and a half away, but bettors are already taking positions and moving the spread.

The first line move for the Kansas City Chiefs-Philadelphia Eagles matchup made it seem like the Eagles would get most of the action in the leadup to the game. The Chiefs very briefly opened as 1.5-point favorites at BetMGM on Sunday, but that flipped to Eagles -1.5. Then it moved again very quickly to Eagles +2.5. Almost 70 percent of the money bet early in the week at BetMGM was on the Eagles.

The momentum toward the Eagles didn’t last long.

The Chiefs came back to +2, and then there was another move to Chiefs +1.5.

The betting evened out a bit.

“Right now we’re seeing even action on both sides for the Super Bowl but that could change leading up to kickoff,” BetMGM sports trader Christian Cipollini said in a release.

With the back and forth, it’s hard to know where the point spread for the Super Bowl will settle. Sportsbooks don’t like to make big changes to a point spread for a big game, and the Super Bowl is by far the biggest game in the betting world. Changes in the point spread mean sportsbooks are in danger of being “middled,” when two different sides can win. For example, if the Super Bowl ends up as a 23-21 Eagles win, Chiefs +2.5 tickets and Eagles -1.5 tickets would all win. That would be a bad result for the sportsbooks.

That’s why the point spread for the Super Bowl is very unlikely to get to Eagles (or Chiefs) -3. Three is a key number in football betting because that and seven are the most common margins of victory, so wherever the line ends up settling, it will probably be shorter than three for either side.

This is a great matchup for Super Bowl LVII. The tight point spread and the back and forth on the line movement tell the story.