An entertaining Olympic Games provided a nice boost to a typically slow sports summer.
The Paris event drew 76% higher television ratings compared to the Tokyo Games held in 2021. With 38 U.S. states now offering legal sports betting, compared to less than 20 during the previous Olympics, heavier action was expected during this year’s more than 300 medal events.
And the Paris games delivered.
Caesars told Covers on Monday that the 2024 Olympics generated the most wagers behind only MLB over the last two weeks.
But it didn’t come without controversy. The U.S. was favored to win the most gold medals at -750, according to DraftKings. China tied the USA with 40 golds following the final event on Sunday.
DraftKings and bet365 told Covers that the total gold medal market was settled with dead heat rules, so the payouts on USA-China were halved.
FanDuel and ESPN BET handled that market the same way, according to an ESPN report.
A different approach
BetMGM reportedly implemented a silver-count tiebreaker in the online sportsbook’s gold medal market, which gave the U.S. the edge over China in payouts.
Meanwhile, Prime Sports, which operates in Ohio and New Jersey, paid out both U.S. and China as winners.
So, with the US & China tied at 40 for “most gold medals”, @primesportsbook has paid out backers of both countries in-full.
— Joe Brennan Jr (@joebrennanjr) August 11, 2024
Congrats to all of you.
“We felt like this was the best outcome for the market and the players that bet into it,” Prime executive chair Joe Brennan Jr. told Covers. “Making it a push or refunding the bets wasn’t a great result even if it fell within our house rules, so we went ahead and paid out. We’re not getting into the ‘bad beat refund’ business, because it wasn’t anything like that. It was a good, if unlikely, competitive result that doesn’t establish any precedents.”
South Point Casino in Las Vegas paid out the same, ESPN reported.
It’s unknown how much money was wagered on this market, but Caesars said more collective bets came on individual competitions than the medals markets.
Holding on for gold
The U.S. captured basketball gold on both sides and while neither heavily favored team covered double-digit spreads in the gold medal games, both provided in-game wagering opportunities with dramatic finishes.
The U.S. men’s squad, which needed a 13-point, fourth-quarter rally to beat Serbia in the semifinal round, pulled away from France late on the hot shooting of Steph Curry to win 98-87. The French team, led by Victor Wembanyama, covered the +16.5.
The Olympic men's basketball final was the most bet event of the Olympics at bet365 and the third-most bet game overall during the two-week span in which the Olympics were held.
DraftKings told Covers that 91% of the money and 88% of the wagers were on the USA to win gold at -700.
The U.S. women’s team kept its 61-game winning streak alive and captured an eighth consecutive Olympic gold with a narrow 67-66 win over France on Sunday.
The A’ja Wilson-led squad took in 98% of the bets and 94% of the handle in the market to win gold at -3,500.
Major events
Men’s and women’s basketball, according to Caesars, provided the top seven most popular betting events, followed by the USA women’s soccer 1-0 win over Brazil in the final.
FanDuel listed hoops as the No. 1-most bet sport with soccer and tennis coming in second and third.
The biggest upset, according to ESPN’s report, was Italy gymnast Alice D’Amato claiming gold at 80-1 in the women’s balance beam while USA’s Simone Biles was the favorite at -175.
