Paris Olympics Best Bet: China (+400) at BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review)
The top sportsbooks have released their odds for the medal counts of the upcoming 2024 Paris Olympics.
You can bet on which country will win the most medals and on which country will win the most gold medals. There are many more betting options available for the upcoming Olympics, including on Men’s Basketball and other events.
For your best bets, I am interested in the gold medal total. I will argue that oddsmakers, in favoring the United States so heavily, are way off. My contention is that China is worth investing in to achieve the most gold medals.
If you want to learn more about the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics and find the best bets for various games and events, check out our Olympics betting page.
Paris Summer Olympics 2024
Friday, July 26, 2024 – Sunday, August 11, 2024 at France
The Odds
According to BetOnline, the USA is favored at -600 to win the most gold medals. At +400, China is the second-most favored country to win the most gold medals.
No other country comes close to China in the odds table. France is the third-most favored country to win the most gold medals, but it is listed at +5000.
How To Approach the Odds
The country that people will generally think of as being likeliest to earn the most gold medals is favored very heavily to do so.
Part of what I want to say in response to this fact relies on the point that odds lack predictive value partly because they are based on public perception. I also want to emphasize that we have to think like bettors here.
My main argument is that, as bettors, we should deviate from the common perception that the United States will win the most gold medals.
It is just not worth investing in the USA at this price. Even if we are immediately inclined to think that the USA will win the most gold medals, the odds should dissuade us from investing in this country.
If we were to invest a standard unit in the USA and lose, then we would have to win several bets in order to make up for this loss. Such a loss would be uniquely detrimental to our bankroll.
The idea could occur to invest less than a unit in the USA, but then the payout would not be attractive enough to justify the investment in the first place.
We should approach the odds, therefore, by looking for the most attractive prices – and I am saying that -600 is completely unattractive.
The Odds Are Off
By favoring the United States at -600 to win the most gold medals, oddsmakers suggest that the competition to win the most gold medals won’t be a close one.
To think of an analogy, the best major league baseball team might face the worst one at home and won’t be favored by anything close to -600.
-600 is really a huge statement.
The point that I want to make is that the odds for the gold medal total should rather be analogous to the odds for a baseball game between two very evenly matched teams. This is a big difference from what the odds are.
Why Should We Like China at All?
To justify an investment in China, we have to find it plausible that this country will win the most gold medals.
In case you are resistant to the idea of betting against the United States, I want to clarify, in connection with the concept of betting value, that, given the current odds, we don’t need to feel super sure that the Chinese will win the most gold medals to feel certain that we should invest in them.
The degree of plausibility that we should identify in their winning the most gold medals should just be sufficiently high to like them at the current price.
I love China at +400 a lot because I would still love China even if it were listed at +200.
China is, in actuality, so close to the United States in gold medal-winning capability that the odds should really have China and the United States at close to even money.
Recent History
Recent Olympic history shows what I mean.
In the 2021 Summer Olympics, the Chinese finished with one fewer gold medal than the United States. The USA had 39, and the Chinese had 38.
This is not the gold medal disparity that one would at all expect when one country is favored so heavily over another.
All we need for China to win is for one fewer event to go the Americans’ way and one more event to go China’s way.
Given the number of sports in which the Chinese are expected to have at least one top-three finisher and given the potential for the Americans to decline, relative to the last Summer Olympics, in various sports, there is a lot of potential for just a little bit of variation that we need to play out in China’s favor.
Gracenote Predictions
Nielsen’s Gracenote is a valuable predictive tool for the Olympics.
For the last Summer Olympics, this tool correctly predicted the ten best medal-winning countries.
This tool, for the upcoming Olympics, predicts China to finish with one fewer gold than the United States – 36 to 37.
Gracenote has been imperfect when it comes to predicting medal-winning countries in order, so it could very well err in predicting the United States to finish ahead of China.
We just need Gracenote to be off by two medals in order to get a great payout.
The point here, again, is that both countries are expected to finish neck-and-neck, and yet China is listed at +400, which is incredible. The potential is here for a great payout.
Best Bet: China (+400) at BetOnline
*The line and/or odds in this article might have moved since the content was commissioned. For updated line movements, visit BMR’s free betting odds product.
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