Trick or Eat: Joey Chestnut is the favorite in the Halloween Candy Bowl, co-sponsored by DraftKings
Halloween night, especially when it falls on a Friday or Saturday, has always been one for parties, food, and candy.
A lot of candy.
In this crazy 2020, though, things are going to be different, even for people like Joey Chestnut and Miki Sudo, the two reigning long-time champions of the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest (among others).
Major League Eating and DraftKings have partnered for the first Halloween Candy Bowl, which will take place Halloween night at 7:30 EDT (4:30 PDT) in Las Vegas at the Beer Park, right outside of the Strip and Bellagio Fountains.
The world’s top six competitive eaters have six minutes to complete six pounds of candy (six different kinds of candy – candy corn, Kit Kats, M&M’s, Milky Ways, Snickers, Mini Reese’s). The winner is the first to finish all courses, or the person who eats the most over the six minutes.
If you have not seen Chestnut in particular eat in a competition, it is an amazing feat of human endurance. I have covered him twice in the World Famous Case’s Pork Roll Eating Contest in Trenton, New Jersey (where he shattered the record in 2019 with 61.5- SIXTY ONE AND A HALF- pork roll sandwiches in 10 minutes), and it is amazing. You can watch that video here as a warmup for tomorrow night.
Of course, Chestnut is the favorite (-110 with DraftKings), as he is heading into most events. But he has some tough competition in the event: Geoffrey Esper is second choice at +160, and looks the most likely to defeat the King of Competitive Eating. Darren Breeden is third choice at +600, Nick Wehry is fourth choice at +700, Matt Stonie fifth choice at +1500, while Miki Sudo is +1600.
The six entrants are the current top six in the world with Major League Eating.The winner will pick up $2,500, with the rest of the $5,000 prize money distributed like this: second $1,250, third $650, fourth $300, fifth $200, sixth $100.
“The way we did (the odds) is, Joey Chestnut is the top eater,” DraftKings Head of Sportsbook Johnny Avello said. “Everyone knows him for hot dogs, but Geoffrey Esper faced Joey 11 times last year, and won five times. Those competitions were for chicken wings and some other disciplines.
“These are the top six eaters in the world. They all have won in different disciplines, but no one has ever won in a six-pound candy event, so it is kind of unknown. So Joey deserves to be the favorite, but we felt a short favorite, at 10/11.”
In Colorado, Illinois, and Indiana, customers will be able to wager on who they think will eat the most candy, and customers in all states can get in on the action with DraftKings’ $10K free-to-play pool.
This is the first of three events scheduled between Major League Eating and DraftKings. The next event will be during the Thanksgiving Holiday, and will feature a complete Thanksgiving meal with a whole roasted turkey. Finally, the series will culminate on Super Bowl Sunday (right now February 6, but who knows with COVID-19) with a Big Game Party Spread eating contest.
All the events, including the one Halloween Night, will be live-streamed on DraftKings Youtube and Twitch channels, as will the future events.
As of Friday morning, 74 percent of the handle at DraftKings had come in on Chestnut, with 16 percent on Stonie, and nine percent on Esper. But the percentage of bets was different: Stonie had 48 percent, Chestnut 35 percent, and Esper 11 percent.
So people are backing Chestnut with the heavy money, but taking chances with Stonie at +1400.