Daily Sports Betting Preview 7/18/2020: NASCAR Xfinity, PDC Darts, PGA Memorial

• Kyle Busch is a -150 favorite over the field to win the NASCAR My Bariatric Solutions 300.
• The PDC has five matches in the World Matchplay today and will be using piped-in crowd noise.
• The Memorial’s day three is about to kick off, and the futures odds are very interesting.

LAS VEGAS - Welcome to this special Saturday edition of the Daily Sports Betting Preview, wherein three good sports betting opportunities are discussed.

This Preview starts out with an examination of some NASCAR Xfinity Series action from Texas Motor Speedway. Then, the Preview checks out some PDC darts betting, with the PDC’s new decision to pipe in crowd noise.

Finally, the Preview takes a look at the futures odds heading into day 3 of the PGA’s Memorial tournament.

There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get started!

NASCAR Xfinity Series Betting

The NASCAR Xfinity series is the main event of the racing world for today, with the Cup Series race occurring on Sunday.

This means that there will be a lot of extra attention paid to the Xfinity Series, which can be both good and bad for bettors. There will be more action, but the lines might also be a bit sharper, as the online sportsbooks pay attention as well.

This week’s Xfinity Series race is the My Bariatric Solutions 300, from Texas Motor Speedway.

The odds boards are littered with all the usual suspects in the Xfinity Series, so let’s take a look at the odds for this race!

Kyle Busch has deigned to descend from his lofty throne in the Cup Series and walk amongst the mere mortals in the Xfinity Series this week.

Busch is, to be blunt, a little too good for the Xfinity Series. After all, the man is the current Cup Series champion, a title he has won twice in his career.

The odds follow that train of thought - Busch is a -150 favorite, clearly above Xfinity Series standouts like Chase Briscoe, Austin Cindric, and Noah Gragson.

That trio have been at the top of almost every Xfinity Series odds board this season, but when someone of the caliber of Busch joins the race, the sportsbooks have to respect him.

Betting on this race should be interesting given the dynamics between Busch and the rest of the field. NASCAR bettors have a lot to look forward to with this one.

PDC Darts Betting

The PDC has made the interesting decision to pipe crowd noise into the World Matchplay games that will be played this weekend.

🗣️ "We want the players to react and show some emotion as best they can." @OfficialPDC chief executive @MattPorter_PDC runs through their plans to help the players feel more relaxed on stage at the World Matchplay behind closed doors

Full interview 👉 https://t.co/LDUejyRoKx pic.twitter.com/WAfUxsZ2bd

— Weekly Dartscast (@WeeklyDartscast) July 16, 2020

Porter was quoted saying the following on the Weekly Dartscast:

“There will be artificial crowd noise, which we’ll also be playing into the hall. We think it’ll make it a better atmosphere inside the hall than if it was just...silent and echoey; so that’ll probably make it a little bit more relaxed."

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Porter added that “We don’t want it to look sterile, even though it’ll be played in a relatively sterile environment.”

This could shake up some of the darts betting odds for this weekend’s matches, or it could simply leave them the way they are. There isn’t a lot of data on the effect of crowd noise on darts players, and there’s even less on the effect of artificial crowd noise as opposed to authentic noise.

Speaking of the betting odds, let’s take a look at one of today’s matches:

In this matchup, James Wade is a heavy favorite over Keegan Brown, with -291 odds painting him as one of the day’s larger favorites.

The spread reflects a similar gap between the two competitors:

It seems that even the spread of -2.5 was not enough to swing the matchup fully in the favor of Brown, with Wade -2.5 having slightly better odds than Brown at +205.

This is one of five matches to air tomorrow in this competition, so there’s no shortage of darts betting on the table.

PGA Memorial Day 3 Betting

The Memorial’s day two was a memorable one, and everyone who did not make the +3 cut has now been eliminated.

The field is led by Ryan Palmer and Tony Finau, both of whom are sitting pretty at nine-under-par over the course of the last two days.

It should come as no surprise that they’re both near the top of the odds boards as well.

Interestingly, the leader on the odds boards isn’t Finau or Palmer, but is instead Jon Rahm at +250 odds.

Rahm is currently sitting in third place on the official standings, with a score of -8, and is two strokes clear of fourth place Chez Reavie and Luke List, who are currently clocked in at -6.

One pattern that clearly emerges here is that the golfers who are popular and well known to be good are getting shorter odds than their position would suggest they should.

This is not necessarily a mistake on the part of the sportsbooks - when it gets down to crunchtime, golf bettors probably trust Rory McIlroy over Chez Reavie.

That said, McIlroy is actually sitting at -2, four strokes behind Reavie, and has shorter odds on the board.

This is certainly an interesting dynamic. There’s a lot to consider when wagering on these odds for The Memorial.

Happy Betting!