Sports betting at the 2012 London Olympic Games

Everything you need to know about betting on the Olympics

Betting on the Olympics should be particularly interesting this year. The 2012 Olympic Games are set to take place in London, one of the great spots in the world for sports betting. Wagering on sports has been a tradition in the UK for hundreds of years. The 2012 London Olympic Games is the ideal combination of the Olympic athletic tradition and the sports wagering culture of London. The setting of these Olympics should provide plenty of betting opportunities in every Olympic sport this summer.

Here’s a guide to everything you need to know to get into all the Olympics betting action.

London 2012 Olympics Basics

This cycle of Olympic events are scheduled to begin on 26 July. This is the date of the opening ceremony, but by that date, there will have already been 10 events held, mostly football with a couple of archery events thrown in for good measure. This year’s Olympics closing ceremony, the end of London’s third Olympics event, is scheduled for 12 August. That means 26 Olympic sports across 38 disciplines will all take place in just seventeen exciting days. This means a great deal of Olympic betting in a very short space of time.

The condensed time of the Olympics makes it perfect for sports wagering. Unlike the NFL or college football in America, and football events around the world, bettors won’t have to wait long for the results of their wagers. Medal ceremonies take place all the time, and wagers will pay off or lose out in a matter of hours, not weeks.

Olympics Betting Basics

Betting on the Olympics is a matter of choosing winners in over two dozen sports. Unlike traditional sports wagers, which allow bettors to focus on one sport for an extended period of time, Olympic bets let you spread your bankroll around, put a little on swimming, a little on boxing, etc.

The first trick to London 2012 betting is to become at least a little familiar with each of the Olympics sports on offer this cycle. Here’s a list of the sports available for Olympic wagers:

Archery
Athletics (track and field and combined events)
Badminton
Basketball
Beach Volleyball
Boxing
Canoe Slalom
Canoe Sprint
Cycling – BMX
Cycling – Mountain Bike
Cycling – Road
Cycling – Track
Diving
Equestrian – Dressage
Equestrian – Eventing
Equestrian – Jumping
Fencing
Football (soccer)
Gymnastics – Artistic
Gymnastics – Rhythmic
Gymnastics – Trampoline
Handball
Hockey
Judo
Modern Pentathlon
Rowing
Sailing
Shooting
Swimming
Synchronised Swimming
Table Tennis
Taekwondo
Tennis
Triathlon
Volleyball
Water Polo
Weightlifting
Wrestling

Obviously it is unlikely that a bettor will be familiar enough with each of these events to place informed bets on all 28 of them. Smart Olympics bets are placed only on sports that a bettor knows something about.

Olympic betting will be a little more complex this year, since the London 2012 Olympics are handing out 302 total gold medals, the largest number in Olympic Games history. The inclusion of more obscure games like handball, water polo, and the modern pentathlon event are unfamiliar to most fans of sports wagers, but could provide an interest distraction from all the Olympic football betting.

Betting Odds for the Olympics

If you’ve placed sports wagers before, you won’t have too much trouble understanding the odds for Olympic betting. Don’t bet on the Olympics unless you’re somewhat familiar with traditional wagering, odds, and point spreads. For a refresher course, let’s examine odds for Olympics bets.

The most elementary way to bet on the Olympics is a proposition bet on which country will take home the most gold medals. Betting sites catering to Olympics bets list the odds for this popular prop bet in one of two different ways.

The most common odds representation for prop bets is fractional odds. For example, during the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin, popular sports betting site Bodog offered the following odds for the top three contenders in the medal total proposition bet:

Norway 11/10
Germany 5/4
United States 11/5

Those fractions next to the names of the countries represent their odds of winning the most gold medals. Fractional odds are most common in horse and dog racing, and they indicate the amount of a bettor’s winnings should the prop bet pay off. In this example, bettors who back Norway to win the most medals will earn $11 for every $10 they wager. Those odds indicate that Norway is a heavy favourite, especially compared to teams with longer odds, such as Holland. Bodog offered 90/1 odds on Holland winning the most gold medals, a bet that would pay of $90 for every dollar wagered.

Fractional odds are common for other Olympics sports as well. So are the other most common form of odds for the all-important gold medal prop bet, moneyline odds. Sometimes called American odds, for their popularity with American sportsbooks, moneyline odds represent how much cash you’d have to risk in order to win $100 OR, in the case of an underdog bet, how much you would win IF you risked $100.

Sounds complicated, but it really isn’t. Here are the top three contenders for most gold medals won at the 2006 Games in Turn represented by moneyline odds through Nine Sportsbook:

Germany -150
USA +200
Norway +300

Take a look at the positive and negative signs in front of the number. A negative sign indicates that Germany is the favourite, meaning you’d have to risk $150 to win $100. The positive symbol in front of USA indicates that the USA is an underdog, and that 200 number means if you risk $100 on the best, you’ll win another $200. That’s the only tricky thing about moneyline odds: you have to take the plus or minus symbol into account when figuring your potential winnings.

Popular Olympics Bets

Online sports betting for Olympic events will focus on popular sports. Olympics men's basketball and football are highlights of every summer games, but don't ignore the less common ways of betting on the Olympics. Olympic betting is a rare occasion for bookmakers who don’t normally write lines on games like steeplechase, handball, and judo.

Since bookmakers use their inside knowledge of athletes and things like venues and referees to write the best possible odds, situations like the Olympics that offer unfamiliar venues and unfamiliar sports are a great time for sports bettors to get a leg up against the books themselves.

You’ll most likely see the best odds on world class athletes. Betting on the Olympics these days means betting on names like Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the world, or popular British athelete Jessica Ennis in the heptathlon. But there is a lot of value in betting on lesser-known sports. That’s because bookmakers aren’t as familiar with the ins and outs of rhythmic gymnastics as they are on professional basketball or football.

Proposition bets are always popular in Olympics betting, like the bet we looked at above. You can place Olympics bets on things like which country will be the first to earn a medal, the last to earn a medal, and which countries will go the entire Olympics without a single medal. This is partially because the Olympics are a time when people who wouldn’t normally bet decide to throw a little money to the sportsbook, and partially because such a massive event offers lots of opportunities for odds to be made.

Arbitrage in Olympics Betting

Notice that both of those sets of odds list different favorites. That leaves room for what sports bettors call “arbitrage bets” or “arbs.” In this case, betting on Germany at Nine Sportsbook (at -150 moneyline odds) and Norway through Bodog (at 11/10 fractional odds) gives you the chance to bet on two different favorites for the same sport. That means you’d have a good shot of winning one of the two bets and covering the loss on the other.

True arb bets are a bit more complicated, and require a little more footwork. If you can find two different sportsbooks offering odds on two different favorites for the same event, you could bet both sides, and win (or at least cover) either way.

This is particularly useful during football events, as bookmakers in America will offer different odds than bookmakers in the UK, thanks to a different understanding of favorites and the way football is played. Olympics betting using arbitrage is a safe way to protect your sports betting bankroll.

London 2012 betting will be as exciting as any other Olympics sports betting, but maybe a little more so thanks to the location of the games being a sports wagering hotspot. Betting on the Olympics is big business, but it is important that people who plan to bet on the Olympics understand the basics, like how to read odds, what sports are being played, and how to place smart and safe bets. With a little bit of research and a small bankroll, you can even earn a little money from this year’s Olympic Games, if you have patience, some knowledge about a particular event, and a bookmaker overwhelmed by the sheer volume of sporting events in the Olympics.