Serena a Wimbledon long shot; Sinner favored

Serena Williams is making her return to Grand Slam singles tennis at the 2026 Wimbledon Championships and sportsbooks are bracing for all of the attention from bettors she could bring, even as they keep her as a relative long shot. Aryna Sabalenka is the favorite to win the women's tournament at Wimbledon, showing +350, with 2022 champion Elena Rybakina next at +550 and 2025 champion Iga Swiatek at +750, according to DraftKings Sportsbook odds. Williams, coming off nearly four years away from Grand Slam competition, checks in at 35-1, but her odds have fluctuated wildly since she announced her return: On Tuesday, she was 28-1 and by Thursday, she had lengthened out to 50-1 before shortening back down to her current level. Regardless, bookmakers are preparing for American bettors to back the all-time great in her comeback, with Caesars Sportsbook's head of tennis Lewis Harland saying that his team is "absolutely" expecting public support and that Williams is currently the book's second-largest liability on the women's side. DraftKings sportsbook director Johnny Avello characterized Williams as "one of our higher liabilities." In general, the parity in the women's game is leading to a lot of action for the tournament and bettors are taking shots on players all over the odds board. Bookmakers from BetMGM, Caesars and DraftKings report Coco Gauff (11-1), Jessica Pegula (12-1), Naomi Osaka (25-1), Emma Raducanu (30-1) and Emma Navarro (60-1) all holding various levels of liability. "The women's side has taken so much more money than the men's side, at least at this point," Avello told ESPN. "The men's has always been difficult to overcome the top two or three players. On the women's side, I think there's always more openness that anybody could win it on a given day and the players are betting exactly that way." On the men's side, Jannik Sinner will enter Wimbledon with a -165 price to win it all at DraftKings, the second consecutive Grand Slam tournament in which he'll be odds-on. The Italian national notoriously came into the 2026 French Open with extremely short -310 odds before being upset in the second round. With Carlos Alcaraz continuing to miss time with injury, bookmakers have had little choice but to price Sinner with minus odds, but bettors are still backing him with nearly half of the handle at BetMGM. However, the sportsbooks are clearly giving the field a bit more credit than they did in Paris. "We started out with him being at a similar price to the French Open once the news broke [of Alcaraz's absence]. However, with recent poor results on clay and some injury concerns with Sinner, we have lengthened his price to the current odds," Harland said over email. "We haven't seen him play on grass since losing in the French Open, so there are a lot of unknowns with Jannik. If he isn't injured and the weather drops from the current temperature to what is expected for the next two weeks, we still see Sinner as the clear favorite." All that said, there are several Americans that bookmakers and bettors alike see as potential contenders. Ben Shelton (16-1) and Taylor Fritz (20-1) are fourth and fifth on DraftKings' odds board, respectively, while Frances Tiafoe comes in as more of a long shot at 80-1. Despite that ranking of the odds, bettors at Caesars and DraftKings are largely backing Fritz and Tiafoe, making them some of the larger liabilities with the sportsbooks.