Olympics Handball Betting Guide: Odds, Strategy & Picks

Betting on handball

How to bet on handball? Is there any strategy or betting tips, picks and predictions? The handball game is fast-paced and high scoring so ideal for betting. The similarities to basketball are key to your betting strategy and with many games one sided the handicap bet is a popular option allowing you to bet on a favorite with better odds. The favorite will be given, e.g a -5 handicap, meaning they have to win by six or more goals for your bet to win.

Another popular bet is a results and total bet: you pick your winner and whether there will be more or less goals scored that a figure offered by your sports betting app. For favorite backers this offers better odds that a straight win.

Sportsbooks for handball betting and odds

For the full range of odds check different U.S. online sportsbooks to see their handball betting lines and Olympics promotions. We recommend American betting sites and mobile apps like betamerica, pointsbet, fox bet, unibet, william hill, fanduel and other legal online bookies. For handball news see handball-planet.com with teamusa keeping you informed of all the Olympics news. You can catch up with live action on the olympicchannel and NBC.

Olympics handball betting and favorites

The sport is very much Olympics orientated and at Tokyo 2021 the competition will take place from July 24 to August 9.

It is popular in mainland Europe with reigning Olympics champions Denmark defending their title in the men’s event. In the women’s event Russia are the reigning Olympics champions and will be among the favourites for gold again. The French side finished runners up in both finals at Rio 2016 so will be determined to go one better in Japan.

The US has struggled to raise interest in the sport at a grass roots level and has failed to qualify for the Olympic Games over recent years; the current plan is to develop a team ready when the Olympics returns to the US at Los Angeles 2028.  

Handball Games

Handball is a seven-a-side sport played on a court where teams aim to throw the ball into their opponents’ net. It arrived as an Olympics sport in 1972 for men and four years later for women.

It is similar to basketball in that one team attacks before possession switches to their opponents. The attacking team passes the ball around the edge of their opponents’ ‘zone’ or box looking for an opening to shoot. The only player allowed in the zone is the goalkeeper or an attacker when diving in to shoot.

It originated as a regulated sport in Scandinavia early in 20^th century but there are historical records of a similar game played by women in ancient Roman times.