Joey Chestnut will be hungry for a 13th career victory on the Fourth of July when he sits down for this year’s Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest as a massive -1600 betting favourite at sportsbooks monitored by OddsShark.com.
Chestnut has dominated since making his Major League Eating debut back in 2005. The 36-year-old has set records in a wide array of competitions, featuring foods like Buffalo wings, meat pies and gumbo, and enters Saturday afternoon’s event in Coney Island, N.Y., holding the record for most hot dogs consumed at 74.
Over on the women’s side, Miki Sudo will be gunning for a seventh straight victory as an -850 favourite. Since setting a personal best at this event in 2017 by eating 41 hot dogs, just five short of the record, Sudo has taken a step back over the past two years, and managed to consume just 31 dogs a year ago. However, the 35-year-old is not expected to face much competition, with the odds of any other women taking home this year’s title lagging at +450.
With both Chestnut and Sudo set as such heavy betting favourites, the sportsbooks have responded by publishing a series of prop bets covering all angles of this year’s competition. Chestnut outpaced his fellow pro eaters by a wide margin while eating 71 hot dogs last year, 20 more than his nearest competition, and has claimed victory by double-digit margins in each of the past four years. That is reflected on the odds, where he is listed as -145 chalk to earn the win by at least 15.5 hot dogs.
Chestnut is also listed as a -250 wager to devour over 9.5 hot dogs in the first 60 seconds of the 10-minute competition, and sports -120 odds of at least equaling his record of 74 hot dogs.
Sudo escaped with last year’s win by just five hot dogs, but is expected to bounce back this year with -175 odds of topping the competition by at least 6.5 dogs. Sitting sixth overall on the Major League Eating rankings, Sudo is also expected to see an uptick in her consumption this time around, with -125 odds of eating at least 38 hot dogs at this event for the fourth time in her career.
The expected dominance of Chestnut and Sudo has dumped the odds of a recount being needed to +550, and the unlikelihood of an eat-off being required to determine a winner lags at a distant +750.