First of all, if you bet on competitive eating, seek help.
With that out of the way, if you did put a little action on this year’s Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest and you took Joey Chestnut’s over at 74.5, a different type of help is on the way.
Some sportsbooks are issuing refunds to over bettors due to the protester who rushed the stage and was subsequently roughed up by Chestnut. The assumption here is that the interaction, albeit brief, potentially impacted the results.
FanDuel and DraftKings are two of the sportsbooks to have announced refunds on Tuesday.
🚨 𝐁𝐀𝐃 𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐓 𝐑𝐄𝐅𝐔𝐍𝐃 🚨
Due to a brief interference at the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, we've decided to refund all straight bets on Joey Chestnut to eat Over 74.5 hot dogs 🌭
(Refunds will be issued within 24 hours) pic.twitter.com/npg5M19GUU
— FanDuel Sportsbook (@FDSportsbook) July 4, 2022
With the disruption during Nathan's Hot Dog Contest, we will be refunding all single bets on Joey Chestnut Over 74.5 Hot Dogs Eaten pic.twitter.com/AyFcW26e3z
— DraftKings Sportsbook (@DKSportsbook) July 4, 2022
This is an extremely generous thing for sportsbooks to do, because let me tell you, Chestnut was not coming close to 75 dogs. Playing through injury, he finished with 63. And even if I’m accounting for the disruption in his rhythm and whatever else it takes to eat a ridiculous amount of hot dogs at a ridiculous pace, I don’t think he makes up a margin of 12.
That being said, it wasn’t a bad bet coming in. The man literally owns the top 10 records for hot dogs eaten in the contest, including the all-time record he just set last year at 76. If I was betting on the contest, I wouldn’t have bet against him either.
