Shutters Go up on Paris 2024 Olympic Games Betting Markets

by Roy Brindley, 21 June 2024

Featuring 32 sports over 18 days of competition, generating 3,800 hours of live sport and providing 329 gold medals, the 2024 Olympic Games will be a betting bonanza. The opening ceremony will be held in Paris on Friday, July 26th, but the sport begins two days earlier with pool matches in Football, Rugby Sevens, Handball and Archery.

Traditional big-hitting betting sports such as Tennis, Football and Golf will take the lion’s share of the Olympic betting turnover at Britain’s online gambling sites. Cycling has a huge betting fanbase on the continent, and American bettors will support their country throughout the Men’s Basketball competition.

France is preparing itself for 10,000 athletes and hundreds of thousands of spectators during the Summer 2024 Olympic Games. ?Getty

Bookmakers will introduce markets on most Olympic sports as the clock counts down from months to weeks and then to hours. However, the shutters have already gone up on several events, and early birds may be able to pick out some value. Courtesy of our expert guide here is all you need to know about betting on the 33rd Summer Games.

Who Will Beat Their Quota With Everything on the Line?

The USA is expected to top the medal table in Paris. The best sports betting sites quote the American team on 1/6 to win the most golds for a fifth successive Olympics. China, offered on 9/2, is considered the nation’s only realistic rival in the medal count stakes. Predicted to finish fourth on the table, Team GB can be backed on 150/1.

Line markets on gold medals and all medals won by individual countries offered by the Unibet betting site provide an excellent insight into what fans and punters can expect to pan out during the Summer Games. Team GB’s lines have been set on under/over 16 golds and under/over 62 medals in total. Either scenario is quoted as a marginal odds-on proposition.

2024 Olympic Games Medal Lines

Olympic Schedules Should Run Like Clockwork

The first medal of the Games is expected to be awarded in shooting. The mixed team Air Rifle is scheduled to be decided by 10.30 am on July 27th. The final medal will be presented for Women’s Basketball at 4.30 pm on Sunday, August 11th.

Fourteen gold medals will be awarded on the opening day of the Games and 13 on the closing day. The busiest days are August 10th, with 39 medal ceremonies and August 9th (34 medal events). Athletics is the sport that offers the most events. Between August 1st and August 11th, there are 48 track, road and field medal events.

The Football Rules Are Not Childs Play

Currently, markets are available on 14 different sports and several events within each of these. The 2024 Olympic Games have many interesting twists. For example, Football has a men’s and women’s tournament. However, the men’s event is restricted to players aged under 23, with a maximum of three overaged players allowed on each squad.

The bizarre criteria could make the Football competition difficult to predict and open to shock results. UK bookmaker odds suggest the French team is the most likely winner – its side is quoted on odds of 9/4. Argentina (11/4), Spain (3/1), and Morocco (9/1) follow. Sixteen teams will participate in the competition, including Mali (33/1) and the Dominican Republic (250/1).

Use the Flemish Form Book in Paris

Similarly peculiar, despite producing one of the greatest Tour de France time trials in history, the 2022 and 2023 Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard does not feature in the Men’s Cycling Road Race entry. Instead, his nation, Denmark, has selected Mikkel Bjerg, Michael M?rk?v, Mads Pedersen, and Mattias Skjelmose to represent it in Paris.

The 273-kilometre race will set off close to the Eiffel Tower. The riders face a hilly day to the southwest of the French capital. There are 13 climbs, mostly between one and two kilometres and averaging five-to-six percent. As several climbs are cobbled, the Olympic Road Race course resembles the Flemish Classics.

Olympic Games betting sites have made the connection. In their current betting, Mathieu van der Poel – who won the fastest Tour of Flanders ever in 2024 and had taken the race twice before – is trading as the 3/1 favourite. The 2023 Tour of Flanders winner, Tadej Poga?ar is 5/1 second favourite.

Who Will Ace the Olympic Tennis?

Olympic Tennis will be played in a familiar setting, Roland Garros. At the beginning of June, Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz landed the French Open on its clay courts, and he is quoted on 7/5 to continue his winning run in Paris. 2024 Australian Open winner Jannik Sinner is 9/4 in the competition betting.

Novak Djokovic has been confirmed as a contestant by Serbia’s Olympic Committee. Now 37, he has taken part in the past four Olympics but has never made the final and has collected just one bronze medal. Priced 4/1 by the UK’s tennis betting sites, he completes a trio of A-list tennis stars in the Men’s Singles event.

Rafael Nadal, Olympic Gold medallist at the 2008 Games, will be in Paris hoping to double his gold tally. However, his target is the Men’s Doubles, where he will partner with Carlos Alcaraz. Betting is currently unavailable on this contest, but with 14 French Open titles on his CV, this duo will surely be long odds-on favourites when it appears.

Have you enjoyed this article? Then share it with your friends.

Share on Pinterest