Super Bowl bets rolling in at Tiverton casino

TIVERTON — Austin Marques may not be a seasoned sports gambler, but he sure can talk like one.

“I bet 100 bucks on the Patriots and then I parlayed on the under 56 total score,” he said Sunday on his way to the Tiverton Casino Hotel.

Like a lot of the casino’s guests that day, Marques, a New Bedford resident, was coming across the border into Rhode Island to enjoy the state’s recently legalized sports betting and the fact that the home team was playing the Los Angeles Rams in the Super Bowl. Also like a lot of the other guests, he was there partially out of curiosity.

“This was my first time here in general, or in any casino at all,” said Marques. “I wanted the experience and to see what it’s like.”

Sunday marked the first major sporting event held since Tiverton Casino Hotel opened its sportsbook. As casino vice president and general manager Joseph Moore explained, the bonus of having the Patriots playing helped bring in an even larger crowd in the days leading up to the big game.

“We knew it was going to be busy and we prepared for it,” he said. “We have people out there trying to educate people too so they know how to place the bet the proper way.”

An extra person was brought on to help take bets from customers and the wait in line was often as long as half an hour on Sunday. Though the casino didn’t have official numbers for how many people gambled on the Super Bowl, Moore estimated the total number of people that placed bets on Sunday was at least “a few hundred.”

“It’s much busier. It’s much more active. The lines have been manageable and steady,” he said. “I’m sure we’re seeing a big spike because the Patriots are in it but I think the Super Bowl interests a lot of people.”

Ahead of Sunday, the Patriots had been forecasted as 2.5 point favorites, but the outcome of the game was far from the only thing people were placing wagers on. The casino supplied 14 pages worth of betting scenarios ranging from the results of coin tosses to comparisons with other sporting events taking place Sunday.

“In other words, they’re very out there,” said Moore. “Like if a hockey player somewhere will score more goals than Brady will throw touchdown passes. It gets that crazy.”

Though unable to provide specific numbers on how people were betting, Moore said the Patriots were clearly the favorite among Tiverton’s customers. In the hours before the game, gamblers and casino employees alike could be found wearing the jerseys of their favorite Patriots players. If there were any Los Angeles fans around, they were hiding their team colors under their jackets.