It’s become a Super Bowl tradition — dousing the winning coach of the big game with a sticky Gatorade shower with time winding down. The celebratory act has become so renowned that now bettors actually put money on what color Gatorade will be used at the Super Bowl. You’re about to get every last ounce of detail needed to bet on the Gatorade bath this year so stick with us for money-making advice.

 

Betting On 2024 Super Bowl Gatorade Shower

As of this writing, it’s a tad too early to get Super Bowl Gatorade color odds. These won’t be released until the NFL Super Bowl matchup is decided after the AFC and NFC Championship games.

A major reason why odds aren’t up earlier is because the actual matchup has a big impact on the betting lines. You see, Superbowl Gatorade color odds line up with the team colors of who’s playing. So say the Denver Broncos are in the finale. Its team color, orange, would get a favorable line since it makes branding sense. The same goes for a team like the Seattle Seahawks, where blue would get favoritism. You get the deal.

This year’s Super Bowl will go down on Sunday, February 11, 2024. It will be the first player in Las Vegas, Nevada, which just begs going down the Super Bowl props rabbit hole.

Super Bowl Gatorade Shower History

The origins of the Gatorade shower date back to 1984. As the legend has it, New York Giants head coach Bill Parcels was the first coach to get bathed in sugar water. A G-Men player, Jim Burt, did it as a fun retaliation more so than a celebration because he wasn’t happy with Parcells’ treatment of him during practice. This was during a regular season game too — not Super Bowl.

The tradition would not cement itself until two seasons later in 1986 when the Giants began to do it regularly on Parcells. That season, Parcells got bathed 17 different times in the regular season and playoff. It cumulated in the Super Bowl when New York defeated Denver.

The tradition stuck beyond Parcells, beyond the Giants, but reserved mainly for the Super Bowl win. Other football events at the high school and college level have replicated the tradition, but the “granddaddy of them all” remains the Super Boel.

And for the record, it doesn’t have to be Gatorade either. In the past, drinking water was used on the sidelines. We say Gatorade now because the world-famous brand is the official sports drink of the NFL currently, which means it gets its branding and drink used on the field. In the future, another sports drink could take the contrast — Powerade or even Prime, as an example. In that event, this bet still goes on as is.

Super Bowl Gatorade Shower Trends

All right, we’ve gone ahead and done the dirty work to find the color of the Gatorade bath every year during this century. We tried to search the ‘80s and ‘90s but data was too hit or miss (TV broadcasts didn’t always show the shower). So we present to you, Super Bowl Gatorade color history since the 2000 season:

  • Blue Gatorade: 4
  • Clear: 4
  • Orange Gatorade: 5
  • Purple Gatorade: 3
  • Yellow Gatorade: 3

As you can see, orange is the most popular color of choice. And this makes sense, right? We mean, orange is the official color and branding of Gatorade.

Earlier on we mentioned that the Super Bowl Gatorade color odds usually favor team colors. However, trends suggest the link between team colors and what actually gets dumped is minimal. Since 2001, the winning color matched the team color only four times. Twice with the Patriots (blue) and once with the Pittsburgh Steelers (yellow) and Denver Broncos (orange). That’s it! So it might not be wise to blindly bet on the team color.

 

Super Bowl 58 Gatorade Color Odds

 

For your convenience, here’s a table listing the most recent Super Bowl Gatorade colors:

What Happens If Gatorade Bath Doesn’t Happen?

Yes, the Gatorade dump is a tradition, but that doesn’t mean it ALWAYS happens. There’s been multiple times that a Super Bowl-winning coach has dodged the bath altogether.

Three come to mind immediately. For one, New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick has escaped the bath on three occasions — Super Bowl 36 (vs. St. Louis Rams), 38 (against Carolina Panthers), and 51 (against Atlanta Falcons). Perhaps the bath was avoided out of fear of Belichick, but more than likely because all those games ended as time expired so there was no time for Pats players to do it before the winning celebrations happened.

John Harbaugh of the Baltimore Ravens also missed out on a shower in Super Bowl 47 when he beat his brother, Jim, and the San Francisco 49ers.

Bettors might be thinking to themselves, “so what happens to my Gatorade color prop bet in this case?” Welp, you don’t win the bet, but you also don’t lose it either. The bet is graded as a push, or tie, in other words. Anyone who bet on Gatorade color Super Bowl odds just has their money returned if it never happens. No harm, no foul pretty much.

We should also mention that sometimes the Gatorade bath happens — it’s just not shown on TV. This was the case last year when the Kansas City Chiefs beat out the Philadelphia Eagles. FOX cameras missed the shot, however, head coach Andy Reid still got it (purple Gatorade) and bettors were paid out handsomely by sportsbooks (purple was a +750 longshot).

Betting Advice For Super Bowl Gatorade Shower

This might be what you came for — tips on actually winning the Super Bowl Gatorade bet. But if we’re being quite honest, the best piece of advice is don’t overthink this. This bet is, more often than not, purely random. Nothing more, nothing less.

Bettors can twist themselves into a knot thinking there’s an actual rhyme or reason behind what color is used. Earlier, we disproved the team colors theory that’s such a popular betting strategy. As we pointed out, there’s almost no correlation between the color of Gatorade and team colors.

There’s also next to no correlation on a team’s color preference. We’ve heard of bettors that study a Super Bowl team’s Gatorade preference — before the Super Bowl, as in what they drank more often than not during the season. In theory, if say the Arizona Cardinals like the blue flavor and they end up in the Super Bowl, they’d request blue right? Eh, probably not.

You can look at the Gatorade color of repeat Super Bowl winners over the last decade or so. Franchises like the Patriots, Buccaneers, Steelers, Ravens, and Giants have won the big game multiple times. During their Gatorade bath, did they use repeat colors those years? No, for the most part. Only New England had the same Gatorade color more than once, using blue in its 2015 and 2019 Super Bowl wins.

See? The Gatorade shower is pure chance. Treat it that way and just have fun with this bet. If you want to actually research a bet, do it on something that’s less random than the damn Gatorade color.

Is It Legal To Bet On Super Bowl Gatorade Shower?

Word of caution: betting on Gatorade color Superbowl can only be done in certain U.S. states. This is less of an issue about whether the state allows legal sports betting, and more so it’s about if the states allow this type of betting. You see, even if sports betting is legal, there are rules on what can be bet on. Something as random as the Gatorade color falls in the grey area of that.

As of 2023, sports betting on non-on-field activities such as the Gatorade shower is legal in the following states: Illinois, Louisiana, New Jersey, Washington DC, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

But here’s the best workaround: use an offshore sportsbook instead. You see, a sportsbook that is offshore circumvents a lot of U.S. regulations because, well, the operation is being run in another country that’s less strict on sports betting. That means you can bet as you wish on these offshore sites — free of worries about breaking any rules.

Our five favorite offshore betting sites are listed below. We’d start here if we were you when it comes to Super Bowl betting:

Where To Bet On Super Bowl Gatorade Shower?

After reading all of this, you almost have to put money on the Gatorade shower prop. C’mon, you’re more informed on this prop bet than 99.8 percent of bettors if you’ve read this carefully. Not using this information to your advantage would be negligence.

We recommend one of the offshore betting sites for all your Super Bowl prop bets — national anthem, halftime show, coin toss, MVP, and more.

What’s more is these same sites also offer lucrative promotional bonuses that could bankroll your Super Bowl betting for free. More often than not, not even the major bookies — BetMGM Sportsbooks, Caesars Sportsbook, DraftKings Sportsbook, FanDuel Sportsbook — can equal offshore sites in bonus bets and a promo code or two. The only thing better than gambling on the Super Bowl Gatorade color is doing so for free!

Meet the author

Eric Uribe

Eric has been passionate about sports since he was 10 years old. He brings over 10 years of sports journalism experience to his expert coverage of sports betting. Hailing from the US, Eric leverages his diverse expertise covering sports at all levels – from high sch...