Super Bowl tails - bungling bookie heads for loss of the coin

Heads you win, guaranteed.

A bookmaker has dropped a Super Bowl clanger by posting a bet they could not win when the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons clash in Houston on Monday.

Bookies come up with weird little Super Bowl bets, known as 'props', and this one involved the coin toss.

The idea is to gain publicity, which this one certainly has, and make the bookies a bit of loose change, which this one certainly won't.

The Costa Rica-based Bookmaker.eu didn't do its homework, and presented smart punters with a winning even-money bet on whether the team calling the coin toss would go for heads or tails.

As the designated away team, the Patriots will make the call. For more than two years, the Patriots always called heads.

"It's a pretty standard Super Bowl prop," Scott Cooley, a spokesman for Bookmaker, said in the New York Times.

"I don't think a lot of thought went into it this year. We started getting some pretty good action on it. Whenever we get one-sided action, flags go up."

The firm initially adjusted the odds before realising they were on a stone cold loser.

"We're up against time," Cooley said. "It has become a competition between the markets and books around the world. Sometimes research can only go so far."

They will lose a relatively minor five figure sum and the "low-level" employee who created the bet will keep their job.

"We make mistakes; we're human," Cooley said.

Other props include what colour Lady Gaga's hair will be at the halftime show. Blond is the favourite.