Table Tennis Becomes Love of Team USA Basketball

Sports Also Is Fancied by Bettors in Oregon and Across the USA

The 2024 Paris Summer Olympics are as much a distraction as they are an attraction. There is Olympic news and Olympic sports betting on events for two weeks every four years, which the public doesn’t pay much attention to the rest of the time. One sport that would seem to defy such logic is table tennis, contributing to the table tennis betting surge.

In the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, the USA men’s basketball team became fascinated with table tennis. The interest started with Minnesota Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards, who caught the bug.

Edwards was, um, invited to watch Team USA play, and he arrived.

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Would Shut Him Out

Table tennis player Lily Zhang was confident in how she would do if she played a basketball player at her game. Eleven-zero, anyone? Easy to back your words when you are a four-time Olympian who was a prodigy at the age of 10.

Now, bringing table tennis back to the states in mainstream popularity won’t be easy. This isn’t tennis. It is table tennis. However, Oregonians are placing sports bets on table tennis at a frenetic pace, reports KGW.com.

Bettors Throwing Big Bucks at Table Tennis in Beaver State

Table tennis betting surge has become one of the biggest sports for bettors in Oregon, according to data provided by the Oregon Lottery through a public records request. In 2023, Oregonians wagered $57 million on table tennis, up from $18.5 million in 2022.

These matches that are being wagered on are often seemingly obscure duels between players in Eastern Europe. Matches go on around the clock, betting lines shift, and there is non-stop action.

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One Oregonian academic, Dr. Ken Pendleton of the University of Oregon’s Warsaw Sports Marketing Program, provided the quote of quotes when it came to the allure of table tennis in the Beaver State.

This is like the crack cocaine of sports gambling” Pendleton said.

More from KGW.com:

In 2023, there were 890,000 single bets placed on table tennis in Oregon, up from 254,000 single wagers in 2022. So far this year, there have been 617,000 bets on the sport. Table tennis betting surge shows no signs of slowing down.

One of the biggest bets on table tennis was on February 2, 2023. A sports bettor in Oregon put down $35,000 on a match between two relatively unknown players in a barren gymnasium in Poland. The 14-minute-long match was played at 10:30 a.m. local time or 1:30 a.m. in Oregon. The bet paid off, cashing out for $41,000.

The attention basketball players have paid to table tennis and the interest in wagering across many platforms in the USA will no doubt get the attention of Commissioner Adam Silver and his colleagues to make sure it is purely of the athletic nature and not crawling into the wagering world. Table tennis betting surge continues to captivate sports enthusiasts.


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