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The 2025 Little League World Series title game will be played today, Sunday August 24.
When all is said and done, this will be one of the most wagered on events of the year (all games leading up to the championship included).
It's been a remarkable run, for sportsbooks. Oh, and for Nevada too. They're still promising a payout of $560 for every $100 bet should they go on to beat heavily favored Chinese Taipei Sunday.
Only a handful of online sportsbooks are taking bets on the Little League World Series, and it hasn't been without some degree of controversy.
The Little League itself has chastised sites like BetOnline for doing so, even though Major League Baseball regularly promotes and normalizes baseball lines daily throughout the season.
"We offer Little League World Series game lines and futures because there's a clear demand for it," BetOnline.ag Brand Manager Dave Mason said. "Our customers request these markets annually, and we've already seen thousands of bets on this year's tournament.
"We don't force it on our customers...heck, we don't even send out LLWS promotional material. These games captivate audiences on national TV every summer, and we simply provide an option for people who want to watch and wager on these remarkable athletes."
Mason recently tweeted that there has been more bets and money (handle) wagered on the majority of the LLWS games last week than on WNBA games. The same comparison was made about English Premier League soccer matches.
What's even more remarkable is that the wagering limits for the WNBA and EPL are 5-10x more than that of the Little League.
"The Little League World Series is very difficult to handicap so we have to keep limits very low," Mason said. "We generally lose money booking this tournament, so going into every season we're in the mindset of being happy to just break even."
As far as the statement issued by the league, Mason had this to say:
"We can understand that there are people within that organization who are opposed to gambling, that makes sense. But there are people within the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL who don't think people should gamble on their respective leagues, yet, it's still happening and it will continue to happen.
"For years, the NFL took an anti-gambling stance, but look at the league now...it embraces sports betting. Why does the NFL embrace gambling now and why did Adam Silver endorse gambling years ago...because they understand that gambling grows its product.
"We recognize that gambling is not for everyone, and throughout BetOnline's 25-year history we've prioritized responsible gaming. We're not forcing anyone to wager on these Little League games, and our platform is strictly for adults who choose to participate."
Nevada vs. Chinese Taipei
Garrett Gallegos homered and pitched five innings to help Nevada beat Connecticut 8-2 in their Little League World Series semifinal on Saturday, setting up a title game against Taiwan.
The Las Vegas team is looking for Nevada’s first title, and Taiwan is going for its first since 1996 and No. 18 overall. It lost the title game last year to Florida.
In the international semifinal at Lamade Stadium, Liu Wei-Heng pitched 5 1/3 innings to help Taiwan to a 1-0 win over Aruba.
The game’s only run came after Chen Shi-Hong opened the third inning with a full-count walk. He advanced on a passed ball and a single, then scored on an errant throw from third baseman Liam Peña Caraballo.
Chinese Taipei comes into this title game as a huge -900 favorite.
The teams play Sunday for the championship at 3 pm ET.
“Really haven’t taken a moment to data dump right now on Taiwan,” Nevada manager T.J. Fescher said. “They’re a great, standout group of kids.”
- Don Shapiro, Gambling911.com
