US is -500 odds, which clearly means they are a HUGE favorite to win.
Every other team is +thousands.
What are those odds saying? I’m expecting a ratio or percentage chance to win type odds. What is this, the money won if you bet on them? Like, zero bets taken for USA, but bets taken for others would pay out so much per dollar/unit?
Those are called a “moneyline” bet, and they’re common in wagering on sports like basketball and baseball. They work differently than “spread” odds, which are common for football, and are based on the point spread on the final score.
Here’s how to read them:
If the odds on a team are stated as a negative number, that team is, indeed, the favorite to win, and you would need to bet the amount after the negative sign, to win $100 if that team wins. In this case, you would have to place a $500 bet on the US team, in order to win $100 (well, your $500 back, plus an additional $100) if the US wins.
If the odds are stated as a positive number, then if you bet $100 on that team, you’d win the amount in the number if they win. So, a +1000 team (a serious underdog) would give a $1000 payout on a $100 bet.
Thanks. (And thanks to the OP).
I’m also perplexed by these newfangled odds numbery things. Meh get of my lawn, etc.
Was this a recent (and I’m at the point of middle age where recent means like in last 10-20 years 
) development? What advantage does this form have over the traditional way of writing odds? (E.g. 10:1, 3:2, etc.)
I’m not sure, as I don’t bet on sports, but it’s been how I’ve seen betting odds presented for baseball for at least a couple of decades.
It does seem like it’s functionally about the same as horse-racing odds, as you note, but again, it’s not an area of my expertise.
So, to be clear, in this system, +100 would be the same as -100 (a coin flip)? And -50, if anyone ever stated that, would be the same as +200?
I believe so, but I’m not sure how often odds are given that are truly balanced that way. For very close odds, you’d be more likely to see something like both teams being at -110, with that extra 10% being the “house edge” (i.e., the house’s profit margin).
Looking at the betting odds for today’s MLB games on ESPN, there are two games (Padres-Nationals and Brewers-Cubs) on which both teams are at -110, and another (Diamondbacks-Royals) where one team is at -105 and the other at -115.
This is indeed a tossup, just as @kenobi_65 has described.
Back to the OP, these are the odds for a given team to win the gold medal. USA at -500 is indeed a huge favorite; you would have to bet $500 to win $100. Your return would be $600: your bet plus your winnings.
The next closest is Canada at +1100. Which means that if you bet $100 on Canada to win the gold, and they do so, you would win $1100, and your return would be $1200: your bet plus your winnings.
If you want a ratio, -500 is 1/5. +1100 is 11/1.
Confusing, I know. Here’s an article with a decent explanation, some of which is over my head.
Those odds might be realisitic but it is worth of note that in the warm up tournament South Sudan, the rank outsiders for the gold medal at +100000 (1000/1) were 16 points up against the USA and in the lead with 10 seconds on the clock before LeBron James saved USA blushes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEvcR5aQxI8
Wait, so I can bet $1000 on the US winning the gold medal and get $1200 if they win?
I feel like most sports betting places would not actually give me that kind of odds. I think they are even more favorited than the odds indicate.
Yes, but $1000 of that would be getting back the money you had wagered in the first place; you would only “win” (be up) $200.
Oh, I get it, but it still seems like too good of odds in my favor.
Every odds line any bookie ever puts on any sporting event sounds like good odds to someone.
Well, -500 is the average that this sportsbook site notes, as well, though it also says that some books are as “short” as -650 for the US.
I guess. I don’t gamble at all, but those seem like pretty good odds. I wonder what the odds were for the 1992 Dream Team. They were indeed awesome, but the world was much, much worse than it is now.
It’s important to remember that sportsbooks set (and adjust) odds so that wagers are relatively equally distributed across all possibilities. That way, no matter the outcome, the book itself isn’t going to take a loss.
I could speculate that the odds for the US might have been even higher, except that long odds for other countries have attracted enough interest from people willing to put money down on long-shot teams (for the shot at a huge payout), and that led the books to lower the odds somewhat for the US team in response.
There’s probably also a fair amount of irrational betting, from people betting on their country’s team out of patriotism, not because they actually think they’ll win.
I agree. I’m surprised the odds are that good, in the sense that I would have expected the USA would have been such overwhelming favorites that you’d need to bet enormous sums to even win a small pittance.
Getting a $100 payout for having wagered five hundred bucks sounds really good. I’m almost tempted to drop $20,000 on USA right now to try to get $4,000.
In the gambling world, it’s a relatively low return, but of course, that’s because it has very good odds of happening.
Many gamblers might not bother with such a bet, because they’d rather be putting their money on somethng that may be less of a “sure thing,” but with a substantially higher payout. I mean, it’s gambling, not investing in the stock market.
Maybe. I guess I’m almost an anti-gambling type of gambler. Rather than low odds of winning something huge, I’d rather bet big sums to win something small.
But then one day I’ll be on the losing end of some Miracle on Ice type of upset and I’d go bankrupt, with that approach.
It probably does say something that the two people here who have said, “those odds just feel too good” are you and @Mahaloth, both of whom have acknowledged that you aren’t actually gamblers.
If, at -500, large numbers of gamblers were looking at that line, saying, “that’s just too good to pass up!,” and were putting money on it, you can bet* that the books would be moving the line to a less-attractive level.
*- intentional pun.