Dodgers to start playoffs still as World Series favorites

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  Doug GreenbergOct 2, 2026, 10:19 AM ET

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  Doug Greenberg covers sport betting for ESPN. He previously covered sports betting, sports business and fantasy sports at Front Office Sports, VSiN and RotoWire. He lives in Chicago after growing up in Boston.

As they were before the season, the Los Angeles Dodgers begin their postseason run as the consensus favorites to win the 2026 World Series.

The Dodgers enter the playoffs as the +200 favorites to win the title, not much shorter than the +230 odds they had coming into the 2026 season, according to DraftKings lines. The New York Yankees, another preseason favorite, are next at +500, tied with the Milwaukee Brewers, owners of the major leagues' best regular season record. The American League-leading Tampa Bay Rays round out the top six at +800.

While bookmakers expected Los Angeles and New York to make it this far, they were more bearish on Milwaukee and Tampa Bay in the preseason, assigning them 35-1 and 80-1 championship odds, respectively.

While many of the World Series bets have been focused on the Dodgers -- a leading 37% of them at Fanatics Sportsbook, for example -- their short odds all season has prevented them from being a liability for basically any sportsbook, with BetMGM and Caesars lauding them as "winners." From there, each major book has a different preferred sequence of events.

"Our big cheers are for the Astros, Guardians, Dodgers and Braves," Caesars Sportsbook VP of trading Craig Mucklow said in an email before the wild-card Series. BetMGM is pulling for New York or Milwaukee, according to senior trader Matthew Rasp, but the Brewers have become a small liability at some other books after attracting late-season action.

At Hard Rock Bet, Florida's only online sportsbook operator, the Rays have taken an outsized amount of action, accounting for one-third of World Series tickets compared to one-eighth from other states, according to data from the book. The sportsbook is also sweating a $1 20-leg parlay that will cash for $82,590.70 if the Atlanta Braves (+850 at DraftKings) win the World Series.

The San Diego Padres (11-1 at DraftKings) are considered a liability at BetMGM and Caesars, but there's one team that every single bookmaker will be rooting against.

"The White Sox, that's a liability that has continued to grow throughout the whole second half of the season," DraftKings sportsbook director Johnny Avello told ESPN, noting them as the only true hazard remaining. "The Yankees are not good either for us, but that liability is way less."

The Chicago White Sox's run to the postseason has been nothing short of remarkable given they entered the regular season with 500-1 World Series odds, tied for the worst in MLB. Between the long odds and the public's love of an underdog story fueling a betting frenzy, the liability piled up quickly across a variety of futures markets. The Sox enter the American League Division Series with 18-1 World Series odds, the longest on the board.