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.
Nearly 11,000 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 feature nonstop sports action, both live during the day and rerun during primetime hours in the US, the Olympics aren’t expected to be a major betting event for oddsmakers stateside. Though the Olympics include several popular sports for bettors, such as basketball, golf, and tennis, many of the events are niche and unfamiliar to many Americans.
Curbed Enthusiasm
While these lines will attract action, Zagorsky predicts that most bets will be relatively small.
“I see lots of people saying, ‘Okay, we’re watching 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 likely to generate more betting action include women’s gymnastics with the return of Simone Biles, a name recognizable to most Americans. Biles, who withdrew from the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo for mental health reasons, returns as the betting favorite for the women’s all-around at -500.
Golf, another closely watched and bet Olympic sport, 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 at -500 and -1800, respectively, 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 a crucial 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 will air events live on its Peacock streaming service and replay big events during its nightly “Primetime in Paris” programming.
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