The Opening Ceremonies of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games take place on Friday, July 26. (Photo by Mike Egerton/PA Images/Alamy Images/Sipa USA)

Olympic betting: This team is the most bet on ahead of the Paris Games

By Chelena Goldman | Last updated Jul 22, 2024 5:37 PM ET

As it turns out, Team USA's nail-biter against South Sudan didn't hurt its appeal with bettors. In fact, it's made things more interesting.

The U.S. men's basketball team is not just the gold medal favorite at FanDuel and other major sportsbooks, they are also garnering most of the bets that are coming in less than a week before the Paris Games get underway.

FOX Sports reports via BetMGM this week that Steve Kerr's team "poses a massive liability at the sportsbook, as 99% of the betting handle is on the men's team to win the gold medal."

Still Processing this sequence. https://t.co/pdCAxIdvdA pic.twitter.com/Yod1Almptd
— USA Basketball (@usabasketball) July 22, 2024

Surely having 13 NBA players on Team USA's roster ups the allure of wagering on this team. It doesn't hurt, either, that Team USA men's basketball has won four straight Olympic gold medals and seven in the last eight Summer Games. And, of course, the rise of legal sports betting in the United States remains a big factor, especially considering how popular it is to wager on basketball.

Sports betting attorney Daniel Wallach tells KXAN-TV in Austin, Texas that the magnitude of the Olympics adds to the excitement of getting in on the action.

"The Super Bowl and the NCAA men’s basketball tournament are historically the two most heavily wagered upon sporting competitions in all of North America. You take the Olympics, with all those hundreds of contests and thousands of competitors over a multiweek period, it’s going to blow the numbers out of the water," Wallach said.