Betting on the National Anthem at the Super Bowl - Our Pick

Among all of the serious bets one can make surrounding the actual football game element of the Super Bowl, there’s one annual prop bet thousands of people wager on each year that has nothing to do with the big game itself.

National Anthem Over/Under

That’s right, if you’re not so confident about predicting what happens on the field during the game, but don’t feel like risking money on something as flippant as the coin toss, betting on the run time of the National Anthem may be for you. Simply put, bettors in some states can wager on whether they feel the designated singer of the National Anthem will run on longer or cut it shorter than the given time. With the Super Bowl being perhaps the biggest stage of them all, anthem singers often add more flare than usual, making a prediction much harder than it seems. 

The song, or at least the portion typically sung for the National Anthem, itself is just a mere 80 words. Yet those 80 words have been sung at drastically different paces throughout the years.

This year’s National Anthem singer is Chris Stapleton, an accomplished country music superstar. The latest odds have the over/under listed at one minute and 59 seconds.

History

If you look at all of the past Super Bowl National Anthems, the average time sits at one minute and 43 seconds. However it’s a wide range on both sides to get to 1:43. Neil Diamond clocks in at the shortest National Anthem time at the Super Bowl, at just 62 seconds to kick off Super Bowl XXI, while Alicia Keys has the record for the longest National Anthem time in Super Bowl history at a whopping two minutes and 36 seconds. 

The wild thing about this year’s performer is that while Stapleton has done the National Anthem at other events, those scouring the internet to do their homework could not find a single trace of a recording to base their prediction off of. This leaves some feeling that the key to predicting Stapleton’s time is looking at other National Anthem singers from the genre of country music. Last year’s anthem singer Mickey Guyton had a time of 1:51 despite holding the final “Brave” for 10 seconds. However the most popular comparison comes from 2017 where Luke Bryan sang the anthem in two minutes and four seconds. 

While Stapelton is kind of known for dragging on songs with his vocals, the over/under hitting could come down to how much guitar play is involved.

Pick: Over 1:59 Stapleton’s style is slow and steady to fully showcase his vocal range and talent. The country music superstar often accentuates the moment with buildups and pauses, which could add to the run time. And if he whips out the guitar to show off even more, we could be here a while.