Call it favoritism — or maybe favouritism.
A pair of bookmakers offering sports betting in Ontario say their users in the province were at least a bit more inclined to back their fellow countrymen than customers elsewhere when wagering on the winner of the 2024 RBC Canadian Open.
The Open, which began Thursday morning at Hamilton Golf and Country Club in Hamilton, Ont., has 28 Canadians in the field, the most in the history of the tournament when co-sanctioned by the PGA TOUR.
And Ontario bettors may have a bit of bias toward the Canadian golfers when their wagering is compared to users elsewhere.
Out of all the jurisdictions BetMGM operates in, the bookmaker said Wednesday that Ontario accounted for the most bets on this year’s Canadian Open, followed by Michigan, North Carolina, and New York. BetMGM also said seven of the top 20 most-bet tournament winners in the province were Canadian players.
“The most-bet Canadians (Nick Taylor, Corey Conners, Adam Hadwin, Taylor Pendrith, and Mike Weir) are receiving, on average, nearly 150% more tickets from Ontario than other states/territories’ bettors,” BetMGM’s Drew O’Dell said in an email.
Great view from behind #10 green. Also gives you an idea of the elevation changes that are common here. pic.twitter.com/NjowSHdcbT
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) May 29, 2024
BetMGM’s splits for the Canadian Open tell a similar tale.
Rory McIlroy winning the Canadian Open was the bookmaker's second-largest liability in the outright market. The multiple major champion had attracted 10% of tickets and 24.3% of handle at BetMGM as of around noon on Wednesday, the most of any golfer.
But those McIlroy figures were for all of the jurisdictions in which BetMGM operates. In Ontario alone, McIlroy's ticket and handle numbers were watered down some, to 9.1% and 13%. That may partly be due to the amount of money that came in on some of the Canadians playing in the tournament.
Defending Open champion Nick Taylor — whose playoff win last year versus Tommy Fleetwood made him the first Canadian to win the event since 1954 — had drawn 2.4% of tickets and 1% of handle for BetMGM everywhere. However, in just Ontario, Taylor was responsible for 4.4% of tickets and 1.9% of handle.
The wagering on Corey Conners was similar, as the Canadian accounted for 3.2% of bets and 2.2% of handle across BetMGM as a whole, but 4.4% of tickets and 3.2% of handle in just Ontario.
Taylor Pendrith, who won the CJ Cup Byron Nelson tournament earlier this month, was responsible for 1.6% of bets and 0.7% of handle for BetMGM in all jurisdictions; in Ontario, those figures were 2.7% and 1.1%.
Meanwhile, Mike Weir, Canada's only Masters champion, garnered 0.4% of bets and 0.1% of handle outside of Ontario for BetMGM, and 2.2% and 0.5% from within the province.
The slight exceptions to this phenomenon appeared to be Mackenzie Hughes and Adam Svensson. Hughes, a Hamilton native, attracted 2.7% of tickets and 4.1% of handle for BetMGM overall, but 3.3% and 3.1% in Ontario. For Svensson, it was 1.9% and 0.9% everywhere, and 1.8% and 0.8% in Ontario.
Showing form
Some action was likely driven by bettors favoring Canadians at the country’s national open. However, the strong play by Canadian golfers of late is reason enough as well for domestic punters to back them, such as the wins on the PGA TOUR this year by Pendrith and Taylor.
“Canada's a country right now that [is] turning out so many players, so super proud of that,” Weir said Wednesday at a press conference. “What Golf Canada [the country’s governing body for the sport] has done is great. Their development program, it's working. We just have a lot of talent in this country. It's showing now.”
Weir, who is captain of the International team for the Presidents Cup later this year versus the U.S., offered some reasons why he even might be worth a wager, saying he’d made a “slight adjustment” to his putting this week.
“And so I'm excited to putt this week, I haven't been able to say that in a while,” Weir said. “The [2024] Masters, I missed the cut by a shot there, and just putted awful. If I would have putted even average I felt like I would have been probably top 20 into the weekend. So my game's still there, my scoring hasn't been there, but now with this little adjustment with putting hopefully makes a little bit of a difference, and it's a golf course I feel that I can compete on.”
More Canadian fandom
There was a bit of Canadian bias shown at FanDuel as well. There, the trading team reported that Sahith Theegala was the most-bet golfer to win the Canadian Open, with 7% of tickets, followed by Fleetwood and Shane Lowry at 6%, and then McIlroy and Taylor at 5%.
But, when looking at Ontario sports betting only, FanDuel’s Canadian trading team said there was a shift in the top five most-bet outrights. While Theegala was still tops, and Fleetwood second, Canadians Conners and Taylor ranked third and fourth, respectively, followed by Lowry at fifth.
Conners arguably got the biggest bump in Ontario in the outright winner market at FanDuel. While he was eighth in the U.S. and Canada combined for bets, he was third in Ontario only.
