Super Bowl 54 Safety Prop Bet Odds and History

Super Bowl 54 is quickly approaching, and with it comes one of the biggest sports betting days of the year. Even if you're not betting on the overall outcome of the matchup between the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs, there's a massive array of prop bets available on FanDuel Sportsbook.

With that in mind, let's take a closer look at one of those prop bets — will a safety be scored during Super Bowl LIV?

Will There Be a Safety During Super Bowl 2020?

FanDuel Sportsbook has "Yes" priced at +900 and "No" at -2200 on their "Safety During The Game?" prop bet, as of Wednesday, Jan. 22.

To start with, let's look at what those lines mean. A line of +900 implies a 10 percent probability of a safety being scored in the game, while -2200 accounts for over a 95 percent chance that one won't be scored.

How Often Are Safeties Scored In the Super Bowl

Safeties have been scored in nine different Super Bowls, while there has never been more than one in a championship game. That means that 17.0 percent of Super Bowls have had a safety scored. Most recently, one was scored on the first play of scrimmage in Super Bowl XLVIII.

Overall, though, safeties tend to be a much rarer scoring play. Going back to the 2010 NFL season, there have been 2,304 regular season games played. In those games, there have only been 95 safeties (4.1 percent).

The Super Bowl is a special, unique game — there's no denying that. But there are two important things to note about these numbers.

First is that the sample size for Super Bowls (53 games) is tiny compared to that regular season sample. Second, the Super Bowl sample dates back to a time in which football was different. Things that happened in the 1970's don't have much bearing on how games play out in 2020.

So if we're just going off past Super Bowls, the +900 odds on "Yes" might look appealing.

Taking a closer look takes away a lot of that appeal though, despite the odds on the "No" side not exactly offering an exciting payout, at five cents for every dollar wagered.

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Jason Schandl is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Jason Schandl also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username Jaymun. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in their articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.