Only five out of 50 states are rooting for the New England Patriots in Super Bowl Lii. Based on data gathered by online sports gambling site betonline.ag, these five states are Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and North Dakota. The gambling site based their report on software that collected 500,000 samples of geotagged Twitter data. A geotag is an electronic tag that assigns a geographical location to any photograph, video, or a posting on social media. The geotag, which was released after the AFC and NFC Championship games, showed that 1,400 tweets from North Dakota favor the Patriots while 1,100 favored the Philadelphia Eagles.
The result was surprising since injured Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz played college and high school football in North Dakota. Wentz was the starting quarterback for North Dakota State University before he was taken second overall by the Eagles in the 2016 NFL Draft. Wentz steered the Eagles to a 10-2 record before he suffered a season-ending knee injury.
Even though they defeated the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC Championship, the Eagles are heavily favored by Minnesota football fans to win the Super Bowl. Based on geotagged tweets, 2,300 favor the Eagles while 950 are rooting for the Patriots. Overall, 438,070 tweets were in favor of the Eagles while only 126,230 took the Patriots to win their sixth Super Bowl crown. The Patriots and the Eagles square off on February 4 in Super Bowl LII at U.S.
Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Eagles are Super Bowl underdogs
According to CBS Sports, the Eagles will be a huge underdog in Super LII. The development came as no surprise since the Eagles were underdogs in their first two playoff games despite being the top seed in the NFC. Multiple sportsbooks put the Patriots as 5.5-point favorites over the Eagles.
At first, William Hill was expected to put the Patriots as a seven-point favorite, but New England was later installed as a -5.5 favorite by Bovada.lv, William Hill and BetDSI.com. The Las Vegas Westgate has the Eagles as a +5.5 underdog, with an over-under of 47.5. In their last Super Bowl meeting in 2005, the Patriots were installed as a seven-point favorite, but New England mustered just a 24-21 win.
Bettor places ‘multimillion-dollar’ bet on Eagles
Despite being underdogs, the Eagles received a "multimillion-dollar" bet from a bettor, according to MGM vice president of race and sports, Jay Rood. The bet was one of the largest recorded in Nevada in the past years. However, it was not determined whether the bet was a money-line wager or a straight bet on the spread.
