Championship Betting: Odds & Public Betting Entering Playoffs
Andrew Doughty, BetMGM
When odds to win the NASCAR Cup Series championship opened at the BetMGM online sportsbook in January, these were the 18 drivers (top 16 plus ties) with the shortest odds:
+500: Kyle Larson
+600: William Byron
+800: Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr.
+1000: Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney
+1400: Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott, Kyle Busch, Ross Chastain
+1800: Joey Logano, Chris Buescher
+2200: Brad Keselowski, Ty Gibbs
+5000: Alex Bowman, Daniel Suarez, Bubba Wallace, Josh Berry
Five of those drivers missed the top-16 cut for the playoffs: Busch, Chastain, Buescher, Wallace, and Berry. Drivers outside the opening top 16 who made the field are Chase Briscoe, Austin Cindric, and Harrison Burton. None had opening odds better than +10000 (Briscoe).
Despite missing the playoffs — and having little chance of making the field over the season’s final weeks — those five drivers still own 15.8% of all tickets and 14.3% of handle in BetMGM’s championship betting. And the other 13 drivers who had championship odds at any point this season own another 10.7% of tickets and 5.3% of the handle.
That means 75% of tickets and 80.4% of the handle still are still live entering the Quaker State 400 this weekend. Larson leads all drivers in tickets (12.4%) and handle (15.6%) while carrying the shortest championship odds (+375).
Hamlin ranks second across the board at +400 with 10.3% of the tickets and 12.3% of the handle. No other driver has a ticket share above 8% or handle share above 10%.
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