From upset wins, to gold medals decided by a few thousandths of a second, to world-record performances, this year’s Summer Olympics in Paris delivered many unforgettable moments.

Such compelling action has also highlighted the opportunity the Games represents to sports-betting fans, providing new ways to engage with their favored athletes and sports while filling a summer lull in the sporting calendar.

For Flutter globally, handle on this year’s Summer Games more than tripled from the Tokyo Games in 2021. On FanDuel, Flutter’s leading U.S. sports betting platform, the total handle was five times higher than Tokyo. When compared to more than three times higher in Super Bowl betting from 2021 to 2024, it’s evident that interest in Olympics betting has grown immensely.

Much of the growth came from new markets – 23 U.S. states now allow sports betting, versus just 10 when the Tokyo Games happened. However, the value of bets placed through FanDuel in those 10 states also more than doubled, proof of strong organic interest in this year’s Olympics. Other factors included favorable viewing times for American and European fans and an abundance of dramatic storylines.

The size of the Olympic opportunity was matched only by the scale of the challenge: analyzing and pricing events across 30+ sports and offering betting on over 320 individual events, many of which are niche disciplines that lack the robust data available for mainstream sports.

To keep operations running smoothly amid round-the-clock global interest, Flutter leaned on The Flutter Edge, its distinctive, global competitive advantage across talent, technology, product and capital. Combining global scale with local expertise, it helps Flutter capitalize on growth opportunities while underpinning capabilities such as data, product, and technology innovation.

For the Olympics, this included creating a specialist trading team from a global pool of experts, ensuring that the best talent was available to manage the complexities of Olympics betting, monitor evolving narratives, and quickly address significant developments. In-house pricing capabilities allowed Flutter to offer competitive and accurate odds across a huge variety of sports.

Flutter also introduced new Olympics betting offers, such as swimming and athletics related parlays, and innovative products like Same-Game Parlays (SGPs) for basketball, an increasingly popular form of wagering that combines multiple bets from the same game into a single wager. Overall, parlays accounted for 55% of bets in Paris, compared to just 20% in Tokyo, and helped power a surge in Basketball betting, which accounted for 63% of Flutter’s Olympics handle, versus 40% in Tokyo.

“Customers love SGPs because it allows them to write their own script, adding more suspense and excitement to a game,” commented Eric.