PORTLAND, Oregon — Sports gambling is booming in Oregon, and it isn’t just NFL football or NBA basketball that people are betting on. Oregonians are wagering millions of dollars on obscure table tennis matches played in eastern Europe.
Table tennis 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.
Table tennis is the fourth biggest draw for sports gamblers in Oregon behind professional basketball, football and baseball. It attracts more betting action than professional tennis, soccer, hockey, MMA and golf.
“There are three different live matches going on right now,” said Dr. Ken Pendleton of the University of Oregon’s Warsaw Sports Marketing Program as he scrolled through the DraftKings sports betting app.
The lineup of matches runs around the clock, with a new contest starting every few minutes. Unlike other sports, there’s almost always action. Matches don’t last long, and in-game betting lines change fast.
“This is like the crack cocaine of sports gambling,” said Pendleton.
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.
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 average single bet on table tennis was $66 compared to $24 on NFL football, $34 on major league baseball and $41 on NBA basketball.
The matches are streamed on YouTube or betting platforms like DraftKings. There’s no announcer and no fans. Typically, the matches are played in bleak-looking gyms, with a single scorekeeper who flips over numbers by hand. Some players are younger, some older. Their skill levels are mixed.
“It isn’t the highest level. I would consider it club level. These are serious players but not close to the national team,” said Sean O’Neill, a two-time Olympian and inductee in the U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame.
O’Neill explained that betting on table tennis took off during the pandemic, when the rest of the sporting world shut down. Since then, new leagues and tournaments have popped up, mostly based in eastern Europe, for the sole purpose of providing competitive matches for gamblers.
“They’re having players play 24/7, all around the clock,” said O’Neill. “Matches at 3 a.m., 4 a.m., 5 a.m., because it is being broadcast to the betting world. What bettors want is the next match.”
The popularity of table tennis isn’t limited to sports bettors in Oregon. In Colorado, table tennis drew $107 million in wagers across all sportsbooks in 2023.
The rise in table tennis gambling nationwide hasn’t been trouble-free, either. In June 2020, officials in New Jersey and Colorado suspended betting on table tennis matches briefly due to concerns about potential match fixing in Ukraine.
Most of the table tennis matches offered by the Oregon Lottery through DraftKings involve the International Table Tennis Series or TT Elite Series, based in Poland. The TT Series has never been flagged for suspicious activity.
On its website, the TT Series claims players are prohibited from betting and there are safeguards to help ensure there’s no match fixing.
“These matches are real. These players want to win. They don’t know what the odds are when they are playing,” O’Neill explained.
The Oregon Lottery said it works with integrity monitoring services, along with DraftKings, to watch for any suspicious wagering activity on table tennis.
“While we have seen notifications of suspicious waging activity reported in multiple jurisdictions, we have not identified suspicious wagering bets within our jurisdiction,” explained Oregon Lottery spokesperson Melanie Mesaros. “If we were to discover that type of activity, we have practices in place to review and take action.”
The Oregon Lottery first started taking bets on table tennis in March 2020 through the Scoreboard app before moving all sports betting to DraftKings. Monthly figures obtained through a public records request show the state has never lost money on table tennis.
Researchers suggest those betting on table tennis are drawn to quick, constant action, similar to video poker or slot machines. The Oregon Lottery is helping to satisfy the appetite of those gamblers with obscure table tennis matches played day and night, they added.
“As we can see from the data, the state of Oregon, DraftKings and other bookmakers in other states are making a nice profit from this and it has the whiff of being problematic,” said Pendleton.
The Oregon Lottery admits it doesn’t promote betting on table tennis, unlike other sports.
“The less attention the better,” Pendleton said. “If you don’t need to market it because people are coming to it anyway and it is going to lead to more regulatory scrutiny, you would do well to not draw unnecessary attention to it.”