With 2023 now in the rearview mirror, it’s time to look ahead to the sporting calendar in 2024 and make some bold betting predictions about the next 365 days.
We’ll start on the gridiron, but we’ll take some swings all over the sports betting landscape for the upcoming year:
A Year of Parity starts in the NFL playoffs
The 2022-23 NFL Playoffs were pretty chalky and culminated with the two No. 1 seeds meeting in the Super Bowl, but don’t expect the same thing to happen this winter.
The Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers have separated themselves from the pack in their respective conferences, but the high seeds behind them all seem vulnerable while outsiders like the Los Angeles Rams and Cleveland Browns are getting hot at the right time.
That is a good recipe for chaos and the parity won’t be limited to the NFL, either.
Other leagues, especially the NHL, are set up for scintillating stretch runs.
Andrey Rublev will win a tennis Grand Slam
The theme of Andrey Rublev’s tennis career so far is that he’s come up short in the big moments.
The 26-year-old Russian has a firm grip on a spot in the top 10 and has plenty of trophies on his mantle (including a Masters 1000 title), but Rublev has never made it to a Grand Slam semifinal despite making it to the quarterfinals on nine different occasions.
This is the year that Rublev not only breaks his quarterfinal hoodoo, but goes all the way and cashes as a long shot at one of the Grand Slams.
Viktor Hovland goes off as the favorite at the Masters
Jon Rahm is currently the favorite to win the Green Jacket, but with the Spaniard having jumped to LIV it’s fair to wonder if the betting market will cool on him as it did with a handful of other defectors in 2023.
Hovland closed his season in style and has shown well at Augusta already, so it won’t take much for him to make his way to the top of the oddsboard by the time we head down Magnolia Lane.
A long shot will make the semifinals at Euro 2024
The major international soccer tournaments are almost always won by one of the favorites but recent history tells us to expect a dark horse to make a run to the semifinals.
Morocco was a World Cup 2022 semifinalist, Denmark made the final four at Euro 2020 and four years earlier it was Wales that gatecrashed the Euro 2016 semis.
So while one of the big boys will likely lift the trophy, don’t be surprised to see a lot of punters take swings on sleepers like Austria, Hungary, Romania and Serbia before this summer’s showpiece soccer tournament.
Betting on the NFL?
The Winnipeg Jets bandwagon will fill up before the spring
Don’t look now, but the Winnipeg Jets are right in the thick of the Presidents’ Trophy race.
Winnipeg is a small-market team and doesn’t have the star power that other Western Conference contenders boast, but they’re structured, deep and have one of the best goaltenders in the world, which makes them quite a chore to deal with in a best-of-seven series.
The Jets checked into 2024 with the third-best points percentage in the league but are still as high as 30/1 to win the Stanley Cup.
Don’t expect that number to hang around much longer.
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