Originally posted on 02/06/2017:

We can discuss all day with our guesses, but the hard numbers are in: Handle $138.5, books profit $10 million, hold of 7.9%.

The CBS article is the usual BS told by Will Hill. They have been for months saying the public is winning this year. Crying for a 100 live bets winning at +1000 or better, or the usual square props (overtime, 2-pt conversion, missed XP), where about 90% of tickets cashed. Of course, the 10% losing tickets are usually much bigger bets by sharps hammering on soft numbers. And of course, they say nothing about the public props that lost (safety, Julio Jones TD, etc). Guess who is interested on persuading the public they can beat the books?

But the line movements are there to read. During the week there was a very slight movement towards Falcons, and a full point move to the under. My guess is that books would have preferred a Atl cover on spread and NE win on ML, but they did OK as the game went. The total was likely a winner for books. OTOH, they lost on teasers. And boston.com article posted by RangeFinder seems to confirm my guess.

Even though books often want to take position on a game, holding the lines steady even when public money is in one side, in the superbowl they cannot take willingly a massive exposure. And the lines moved against public money, guess why? As LT Profit correctly states, public money on favorite and over was balanced by sharp money on dog and even more in under.