Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest (2020): How to Watch and Betting Preview
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The coronavirus pandemic has brought some strange sports into the betting mainstream. This weekend, competitive eating joins the ranks of Russian ping-pong, English darts, and Belarusian soccer as popular events for bettors to lay action on.
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How to Watch
Like most sports in 2020, the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest will run without fans. You can still tune in on your television or online, and coverage gets underway on Saturday at 12:00 PM EST on ESPN.
If you’re a cord-cutter, a subscription to ESPN+ will ensure that you can watch Saturday’s festivities.
Betting Lines and Suggested Picks
Competitive eating stars Joey Chestnut (-1000) and Miki Sudo (-835) are the heavy favorites to win each event. Although DraftKings allows you to take the entire field at a massive disadvantage (+550 and +500, respectively), you can find better value elsewhere.
The over/unders for total hot dogs eaten are the two most competitive lines, and I’ll break them down by contest.
Women’s Contest
Sudo’s line sits at 40.5 on both DraftKings and FOX Bet, but that seems a little high given her recent performances. Sudo only managed to scarf down 31 frankfurters last year, and her career-best mark is only 41. She set that three years ago in 2017.
Eating indoors should help her out, but I’m not confident that she will beat last year’s performance by nine. Her number of hot dogs eaten hasn’t changed by more than six between years since her first win in 2014.
With the under in the plus money at both sportsbooks (+125 at DraftKings and +115 at FOX Bet), it’s a good value bet as well.
Men’s Contest
We’ve got three lines to work with for Chestnut. DraftKings has over/unders at both 72.5 and 74.5, while FOX Bet offers one line at 73.5.
Chestnut ate 71 dogs in 2019, but he set the world record with 74 in 2018. Since 2010, Chestnut has averaged 66.1 hot dogs eaten, but that increases to 71.75 when looking at just the past four years.
Chestnut has expressed optimism that the event will have better conditions since it’ll be indoors this year. As a result, he has told the press that he expects to break his record. I think these changes will help Chestnut consume an above-average mark between 73 and 76 hot dogs, so the over 72.5 (-182) at DraftKings is the safest play. The over 74.5 (+125) is the only line in the plus money, so tap it if you want a high-reward play. It’s certainly within the range of outcomes.
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Isaiah Sirois is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Isaiah, check out his archive and follow him @is_sirois.