By now, you have surely heard the news that LeBron James has made yet another decision. The celebrated forward and basketball goliath will play at least one more season with the Philadelphia 76ers.
As you might imagine, the NBA betting world is quickly taking notice. After opening at 60-to-1, the 76ers are currently fourth in the NBA championship odds table at +950. Philadelphia was adjusted down to 20-to-1 after the Jaylen Brown trade, and 10-to-1 in the immediate aftermath of the news.
The emergenceof a Philadelphia super team that includes James will undoubtedly lead to a tidal wave of betting action on the 76ers. Few athletes have ever developed the personalized fan base that James has, and many thousands of them will surely want to stake their fandom at online sportsbooks.
This kind of liability would be difficult to manage no matter what, and so I expect the 76ers odds to get shorter and shorter as the 2026 calendar year wears on. But what makes it even more challenging is that Philadelphia was already one of the most popular targets of the 2026 offseason.
After the Sixers acquired Brown from Boston in a swap with Paul George, Philadelphia quickly became one of the top betting targets for BetMGM players. On July 2, the 76ers were already the No. 2 most popular championship ticket at BetMGM, with nearly 9% of all bets.Â
By July 11, Philadelphia had become the runaway most popular bet to win the East, accounting for 22% of all conference championship tickets and 19% of all handle. (As I wrote about last week, sharp money appeared to prefer the Wizards odds and Raptors odds.)
And today, just minutes after James announced he was going to the 76ers on Twitter, Philadelphia was the market leader with 17.4% of championship tickets and 24.2% of championship handle. The Sixers remained the most popular team in the conference market, leading Cleveland and Indiana with 22.5% of all tickets.
As I said, LeBron fans will surely pile onto these numbers in the coming weeks and months with additional bets. I have a hard time seeing these numbers going anywhere but down. After all, the original post-LeBron Sixers price of +1000 has already been adjusted down today, to +950. Imagine what the market could look like three months from now!
If you like the 76ers, the time to bet on them is now. There’s a very good chance you’ll have closing line value by the time the first game tips off.Â
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