Thanksgiving Odds: Prop Betting On The National Dog Show

• The National Dog Show airs after the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
• The field will be limited to 600 dogs, down from the normal 2000.
• There are several interesting prop bets with odds at the online sportsbooks.

LAS VEGAS - The National Dog Show is a Thanksgiving Day tradition at this point, almost like turkey or NFL Football.

While COVID-19 will prevent any spectators from attending the event, the show will continue to air in its usual timeslot from noon to 2 p.m. ET.

In addition, COVID precautions will limit the field to 600 dogs, whereas in a normal year nearly 2,000 will compete.

Given the captive audience that the show will have (hey, who amongst us hasn’t eaten too much turkey and sat on the couch for three hours), there are some online sportsbooks that offer wagers on it.

These wagers serve the sportsbooks in that they’re targeted at people who wouldn’t normally be sports bettors.

The idea is that they get people onboard with fun entertainment odds on something like this, and hopefully, they stick around.

Here are some of the odds for the National Dog Show that one might find on the online sportsbooks.

The type of the best in show dog is a hotly contested category, with Hound coming out as the favorite.

Terrier is pretty close to Hound’s +100, with Sporting at +650 and Toy clocking in at +700.

At the bottom of the table, Working is +1400, Non-Sporting is +1200 and Herding is +1100.

This is effectively a coin flip bet, and the odds are set up such that they reflect that coin flip.

There’s not a real way to handicap this bet, so the online sportsbooks just put it up with both sides at -120 to guarantee that they make money on it no matter what as long as the money comes in evenly.

In other words, this is probably not a bet worth looking at - there’s not really a good way to know which way the cards will fall.

Now this is a fun one. This has happened before, although not in the National Dog Show, in smaller shows.

For example, here is a video of a dog that defecates during the Cruft’s dog show in 2015.

However, this category is worded fairly specifically - it refers only to the Best In Show nominated dogs.

It is unlikely that any dog that pulls this stunt will be nominated for Best In Show, and as far as we are aware, it has never happened at the National Dog Show.

The -2000 odds might seem prohibitive, but a 4% return on investment is nothing to turn your nose up at.

Enjoy the show!