Veteran bookie cashes in on ‘The Great Refund’ of Super Bowl XXXI

A tie in any sporting event is so unsatisfying. The same goes for point-spread pushes, which bookmakers despise. Fortunately for them, there have been only two pushes in Super Bowl history. Longtime Las Vegas oddsmaker Vinny Magliulo was the Caesars Palace sports book director in 1997, when he turned one of those pushes into a positive result for his book.

Super Bowl XXXI, Packers-Patriots, Jan. 26, 1997:

“It was ‘The Great Refund.’ The number on the game was Green Bay by 14 and it won the game, 35-21. The game ends as a push. Obviously the props and futures were decided and we were paying that out but we had a line of people getting their refunds on the game that went through the sports book and out through the casino. That was one of the longest lines in the history of not only sports wagering but sports cashing. The line was still out in the casino after midnight.

“I put up not only the following year’s future book but I put up an NFC-AFC Super Bowl prop and as people were looking up and saw the prices, they bet back about half a million dollars. I took The Great Refund as a marketing opportunity for the next year. It was pretty memorable.”