Super Bowl 50 Overview

Sunday 7th February 2016 saw the clash of the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers in the 50^th Super Bowl game.  Much to the surprise of just about everyone, the Broncos won.

The odds in Vegas favoured the Panthers by a fairly narrow margin—around 4 points when I last looked.  One Associated Press sports journalist predicted the Panthers would beat the Broncos 31-18.  Many pundits thought that the lead would be a lot bigger than that—30 or more points.

As you might imagine, a lot of people lost money on this game (maybe you were one of them).  UK sportsbook William Hill took a money-line bet of $623,142.25 on the Panthers.  

So what happened?  Why did the Broncos prevail while the Panthers lost?  I watched the game and have done my own analysis, which I have broken down into three articles.  Check them out:

• Is the Best Defence Really a Good Offence? 
• How Does the Press Impact a Team’s Morale?
• The Surprising Role of Emotion (and Flukes) in Sports 

There were doubtless many other factors I did not manage to sum up in these three articles, but I hope that you will glean some useful insights into the shocking upset at Sunday’s game.  Hopefully this will help you to plan your bets in the future, not just with NFL, but with other sports as well.  Many of the factors which impacted Super Bowl 50 were psychological, and play into association football, rugby, basketball, cricket, and every other sport you can name.