Olympics Unlikely to Spur Meaningful Sports Betting Activity in the US

Posted on: July 26, 2024, 09:28h. 

Last updated on: July 26, 2024, 09:32h.

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The 2024 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of XXXIII Olympiad, formally begin in Paris on Friday with the Opening Ceremony and “Parade of Nations” held on the Seine.

Olympics betting odds Paris France
The Olympic rings stand in front of the Eifel Tower in Paris. The 2024 Summer Olympics begin on Friday. (Image: Getty)

Nearly 11K athletes will compete in the Paris Olympics across 329 events in 32 sports. The games run through August 11.

While the next 16 days will include a nonstop barrage of sports, both live during the day and rerun during primetime hours in the US, the Olympics aren’t expected to be a betting boom for oddsmakers stateside. Though the Olympics include several major sports that are popular with bettors, including basketball, golf, and tennis, the majority of the games are niche in nature and rather unfamiliar to many Americans.

I don’t expect the handle to be especially big primarily for one simple reason: Gamblers like to bet on things that they know,” Jay Zagorsky, a clinical associate professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, told ESPN.

A few notable offbeat sports being contested at the 2024 Olympics include the debut of “Breaking,” or breakdancing. Surfing and “sport climbing,” or rock/boulder climbing, also return.

Curbed Enthusiasm

Licensed sportsbooks in the US will run odds on most Olympic sports. The lines will attract action, but Zagorsky is betting that the bulk of the activity will be relatively small wagers.

“When you’re betting just because it’s something interesting to watch on TV, you’re not going to put large amounts of money down,” Zagorsky explained.

I see lots of people saying, ‘Okay, we’re watching the track and field, but since I haven’t been watching track and field since the last Olympics, I don’t know all the people in this race. I don’t really know how to handicap the field, so I’ll throw in five or 10 bucks, but I’m not throwing down $10,000 on the race,'” Zagorsky added.

Sports that are likely to generate more betting action than most include women’s gymnastics with the return of Simon Biles, a name recognizable to most Americans.

Biles abruptly withdrew from the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, played in the summer of 2021 after being delayed by COVID-19, for mental health reasons. Biles returns as the betting favorite for the women’s all-around at -500.

Golf, another Olympic sport expected to be closely watched and bet, has world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler as the gold medal favorite at +330. The USA men’s and women’s basketball teams are also big favorites, respectively, at -500 and -1800 to win gold.

In the pool, 10-time Olympic medal winner Katie Ledecky is the betting favorite for the women’s 800m freestyle at -400 and 1500m freestyle at -3500.

Olympic Rebound

The 2024 Olympics is an all-important event as the International Olympic Committee seeks to reignite interest in what’s billed as the world’s foremost sports competition.

In the US, the Tokyo Olympics drew about half the television audience that the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro did. The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics was the lowest-rated Olympics in US history.

NBC has rethought its broadcast coverage for the 2024 games. Instead of teasing events in primetime that had occurred earlier in the day, the network this year will air events live on its Peacock streaming service and replay big events during its nightly “Primetime in Paris” programming.