One of the great traditions in American entertainment has become one of the year’s funkiest betting spectacles.

Back in 2020, three states (New Jersey, Colorado and New Hampshire) approved betting on the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, which has grown in popularity ever since ESPN decided to televise the event in 2003.

“ESPN had already affirmed us as a sport in the early 2000s,” Rich Shea, president of Major League Eating, which organizes the event, told ESPN at the time. “But, with legal betting, we are really now as legitimate as the NFL and the NBA.”

As a betting event, Tuesday’s Nathan’s contest won’t do a massive handle since most states don’t offer odds and sportsbooks typically offer low limits on it because of its unique nature, but considering that it’s not really going up against any other sports at the time, it will still attract plenty of casual money.

Don’t underestimate the amount of people in your life that would love to plunk some money down on a bunch of folks scarfing down hot dogs on Coney Island.

The unfortunate thing for bettors looking for value is that reigning men’s champion Joey Chestnut and women’s champ Miki Sudo are massive favorites to win their respective competitions.

Chestnut is a 15-time winner at this event and has only lost once (in 2015) since 2007. Sudo has won eight on the spin herself.

Sudo is a -5000 favorite (bet $5,000 to win $100) to make it 9-for-9 on the women’s side. Michelle Lesco, who won the 2021 competition with Sudo on the sidelines, is the second favorite at 15/1, and the field (anybody else) is 25/1 to win.

If you convert Sudo’s moneyline to implied win probability, you get a 98 percent chance that the New York native lifts the trophy.

Chestnut is a prohibitive -5000 favorite ahead of Geoffrey Esper of Massachusetts.

Esper, who holds the world record for eating Spam, is 12/1 to win.

There’s nothing that makes me qualified to give coherent gambling advice for the 2023 Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, but obvious bit of guidance is that there’s no way you or anybody you love should be laying -5000 on Chestnut, especially since his total dipped precipitously from a world-record 76 in 2021 to 63 in 2022.

Perhaps age is catching up to Chestnut, whose average margin of victory in the last seven years has been 19 hot dogs.

In the interest of jotting down a pick for you, I’ll point to the Under 73.5 hot dogs for Chestnut (-120, BetMGM).

As noted above, the Kentucky native didn’t come close to matching his world record from the previous year and it was the first time he was under 70 franks since he lost in 2015.

And Betting 101 says casual money tends to back the Over, especially in situations like this (who wants to bet against an American icon like Joey Chestnut?), so you can usually find the best value zagging while everyone else zigs. 

The women’s competition begins at 10:45 a.m. on ESPN3 with the men chowing down at noon on ESPN2.