Charlie Puth will sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl this year. Emma McIntyre / Getty Images for The Recording Academy
For decades now, every sporting event in the United States has started with a performance of the national anthem from a wide array of vocalists and performers, ranging from the relatively anonymous to world-class musicians and the most popular artists. None of those performances is bigger, more anticipated, and more watched than the one that takes place before the Super Bowl every year.
It is also one of the few times that it ever shows up as something you can bet on, and as sports gambling, and more specifically, prop bets, have grown in popularity, the Super Bowl performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" has become big business for gambling purposes.
While you could probably look for the potential embarrassment of a singer forgetting a word, the more common bet is all tied to the length of the performance and whether it will go over or under a pre-determined time.
The over-under on this year's performance has been set to around 120.5 seconds at most sportsbooks and 119.5 seconds at BetMGM. Basically, two minutes.
An important note for anyone thinking of putting money on this: The clock doesn't start until the first word is sung, and it lasts only until the last word is done.
Unlike some of the sillier Super Bowl prop bets (like, say, the coin toss), there is some legitimate research you can put into this, not only relating to previous Super Bowl performances from other artists but also from the particular artist in question.
The past two Super Bowl performances were done by Jon Batiste and Reba McEntire, two artists who not only have legendary careers but also have extensive track records of performing the anthem. You could at least get a sense for how they perform it, how long it takes them and what they might do with it.
Charlie Puth has the honor of singing the anthem before Super Bowl LX on Sunday, helping to kick off the pre-game festivities for the Seattle Seahawks vs. New England Patriots at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.
He is a singer, songwriter and producer who got his start at the age of 17 with a YouTube channel doing acoustic covers of songs and playing the piano. He has since become a Grammy-nominated artist and won several awards, including three Billboard Music Awards.
Puth presents an entirely different challenge from the other recent performers because there really is no recorded history of him singing the anthem.
The closest thing we have to go by is a YouTube video of him performing an instrumental version of the anthem on a piano. He performed it without vocals in about 70 seconds. There is virtually no chance he sings it that quickly. Vocals always add time to a performance, especially with a big-time performance on a big-time stage like the Super Bowl.
Seventy seconds would also be a largely unprecedented time-stamp for a Super Bowl National Anthem performance.
While he doesn't have much of a track record with the national anthem, he said he will take inspiration from Whitney Houston's iconic performance before Super Bowl XXV and that it will be the finest musical performance of his career.
Talk about setting a high bar.
For reference, Houston's performance at Super Bowl XXV clocked in at 1 minute and 56 seconds.
The Athletic's Jayna Bardahl attended the Apple Halftime Show news conference, where Charlie Puth shared how he is preparing for the big event.
"A lot of singing in the shower. A lot of singing alone in the car," Puth said.
We have betting information on the over-under that goes back as far as 2007, with eight of the 19 performances being under, 10 being over and one performance (Kelly Clarkson in 2012) being a push. Clarkson hit the 94-second line exactly with her performance, which is honestly a pretty staggering accomplishment, both in terms of the oddsmakers setting that time and Clarkson actually hitting it on the dot. She is an agent of chaos for that.
Going back as far as 1990, the fastest Super Bowl performance was set by Aaron Neville at 1 minute and 25 seconds.
The longest performance since 1990 was by Alicia Keys, which lasted 2 minutes and 36 seconds.
Again, going back to 1990, 21 of the 35 performances since have been under 2 minutes.
There was, however, a significant stretch between 2013 (starting with Keys' lengthy performance) and 2021, where seven of the nine performances went over 2 minutes.
That trend has reversed again in recent years, with four of the past six, including both Batiste and McEntire, coming in at 2 minutes or less in the last two years. Batiste sang it in exactly 2 minutes with a betting line of 2 minutes and half a second.
Ultimately, it all comes down to what the artist, or in this case, Puth, is going to do with it. He has said he is going to sing the song in D Major, which is typically a more vibrant and joyous sound that is often accompanied by strings and orchestra-type settings. That could lead to a more elaborate performance, perhaps one that takes him a little longer to get through. He is more likely to push that two-minute mark than the 72-second mark he did without vocals on piano more than a decade ago.