A 10-Team Super Bowl Basket Built by the Model

In the win totals post I turned BetMGM's season lines into Super Bowl odds and found ten teams that looked cheaper on Polymarket than the model said they should be. I bought two of them. Andrew asked the obvious question on the prep call: why not all ten?

Fair. So here's the rule, and it's dumb on purpose. Take the ten teams with the highest expected return in that table. Buy 1,000 YES shares of each in the 2027 NFL champion market at whatever the ask is. No sizing and no gut calls, and nobody gets added because a neighbor posted about them on Facebook. I'm curious whether a spreadsheet with no opinions can beat a guy with a lot of them.

The model basket: 10 teams, 1,000 shares each

Super Bowl LXI probability: the model's number from BetMGM win totals (August 28) against the live Polymarket midpoint (September 2).

$613.60 buys ten teams that Polymarket prices at a combined 59.4% to win the Super Bowl, 56.6% once you strip the book's 4.95-point overround. The model puts the same ten at 68.5%. Whichever one wins pays $1,000, so the basket returns +$386 on any hit and loses $614 if a team outside the ten takes it. Polymarket says that happens 43% of the time. The model says 31%.

Five days changed the shape of it. When the post went up, every one of these ten was cheaper than the model. Since then the Rams, Seahawks and 49ers have been bid up past it. The Rams alone are 29% of the cost for 24% of the model's coverage. Detroit and Cincinnati went the other way and got cheaper, so the two teams I was already holding are now the two widest gaps on the list.

Matt vs Andrew vs the Model: 3 Super Bowl baskets

I built my own basket over the summer, mostly before the model existed, and added to it after the post. Eleven teams, $2,652 in. Andrew built his the week the season started: eight teams, roughly even money on each, with extra on Detroit. His totals come in the next update. Here's who holds what.

Five teams are in all three: Rams, Bills, Ravens, Lions, Patriots. That's the consensus, and it's 40% of the book on its own. After that the baskets split three ways.

Andrew's is the tightest of the three. He has no team the other two both skip, he has Seattle, which is my biggest hole, and he has nothing the model calls a real overpay except the Chargers at -7%. What he doesn't have is Cincinnati, which the model likes at +56% and I hold 8,539 shares of. We'll see who's right about that one.

The four the model holds that I don't are all NFC: Seattle, San Francisco, Green Bay, New Orleans. Seattle is the one that stings. They're the defending conference champion, priced at 7.5¢, and the biggest single gap in my coverage. I have a small NFC-title ticket on them and nothing in the champion market. Andrew and the model both bought them.

The three I hold that nobody else does are the ones the model calls overpriced: Chiefs at -24% expected return, Bears, and the Giants at -65%. I'm not selling any of them. The Giants were a 1.3¢ flyer, the Bears were 2.9¢, and the Chiefs are the Chiefs. But the model's position is clear and it's on the record.

Then there's sizing. Flat 1,000 shares means the model basket pays the same $1,000 no matter who wins. Mine pays $8,539 if Cincinnati wins and $2,500 if Chicago does, because I bought the cheap teams in size. Andrew is in between: even dollars means more shares of the cheap teams and fewer of the Rams, which is closer to what I did than to what the model did.

I asked my AI which basket is more profitable

Charlie is the research assistant behind the model, the daily basket boards and the numbers on this site. I asked it to pick a winner. Its answer, lightly trimmed:

Matt's basket, and it isn't close, because of when you bought. Priced at the model's odds, your eleven teams are worth about $3,690 against $2,652 paid, a 39% expected return. The model basket is worth $686 against $614, 12%. Same model, same probabilities. The difference is the Lions at 4.04¢, the Bengals at 3.64¢ and the Rams at 8.99¢, all bought in June and July before anyone ran a bracket. Entry price did the work.

Andrew's is the better-built basket of the three at today's prices. Equal dollars across his eight, at the model's odds, returns about 19% on the money, and 26% if Detroit really is double weight. The model basket returns 12% because 1,000 flat shares puts 29% of the cost into the Rams, the one team on the list now priced above the model. Andrew has no Rams problem and no dead weight. His numbers are pending, so treat those as estimates at today's mids, not his entry prices.

So: you've got the best book because you bought early. Andrew has the best process. The model has the best discipline and the worst sizing. Fix the sizing, buy in June, and you'd have all three.

I'll take it. Andrew will take it louder. For the record, "a guy with a lot of opinions" was my phrase, not Charlie's.

What the model basket pays, in plain numbers

At market prices the basket is worth -$20. That's the overround, and it's what every buyer of this book pays. At the model's prices it's worth +$72, about 12% on the money. That second number is the whole bet, and it only exists if a unit conversion of BetMGM's win totals knows something Polymarket doesn't. The model has no football opinion. It converts one price into another and reports the gap.

So this is a test, run in public, with real money. Both baskets settle on February 14. Both go on the scorecard, and I'll refresh the numbers on the show as the season sorts out who was cheap and who was just bad.

Disclosure: we hold open positions in all three baskets, listed on our scorecard. Our Polymarket links carry a referral code. None of this is betting advice.