Sports Books See Failing Odds, More Olympics Bets Canceled

COVID-19 forced the 2020 Olympics to be pushed back to 2021, and now it could push the event even further – or kill it.

Early today, the chairman of the Tokyo Olympic Games Organizing Committee, Toshiro Muto, announced that he did not rule out a “last minute cancellation” of the Olympics, which are due to start on Friday.

This announcement sent bettors flocking to their local sportsbooks to place money on the cancellation of the Olympics. Through Odds Checker, in less than 12 hours since the announcement, the odds of canceling the Olympics have increased from +9000 (about a 1.1% chance) to +1000 (9.1% chance) with over 128,000 $ placed on the Olympics not taking place. Lower payouts indicate the higher probability that the bet will be successful, which is also why more people are betting it.

Despite the announcement, punters still believe the Olympics will take place. Currently, the Olympics are listed at -2000 chances of continuing as is. However, this optimism may not be justified. Just a month ago, between June 14 and 21, Japan recorded only 279 new cases of COVID in the country, bringing their total number of national cases to 10,457. However, between June 21 and July 12, the total number of cases in Japan nearly doubled to 19,742. COVID infection rates across Japan have increased. soared in July and only increase as we approach the start date of the opening ceremonies. From July 5 to 12, Japan recorded a 48.3% increase in new COVID cases from the previous week – the country’s largest increase since January.

For now, only 22.5% of all Japanese citizens are fully vaccinated. This combination of increasing cases and unvaccinated people has already led the Olympic committee to prohibit fans from visiting Olympic venues. Now, with less than three days of the opening ceremonies supposed to take place, the future of the 2021 Olympics hangs by a thread. We all know how quickly COVID-19 can spread, and like many athletes have already contracted the virus ahead of the Games, the likelihood of the 2021 Olympics going off without a hitch appears to be dwindling now. Unless the organizing committee finds a way to narrow the cases down by Friday, I wouldn’t mind putting a few hundred on the canceled matches as well.