While he faced legal issues earlier in the year, nothing is keeping Joey Chestnut from competing in Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. As usual, the competitive eater is the overwhelming favorite to be the best hot dog eater on the 4th of July, but I'm shocked to see the oddsmakers are predicting how little he'll eat.
As many Americans wait to watch the 2026 TV schedule event on ABC and ESPN2, DraftKings Sportsbook is already posting the over and under on how many hot dogs Chestnut will eat. As of writing, Chestnut is favored to eat under 70.5 hot dogs at -140 odds, and +110 to go over that. I'm pretty shocked to see those numbers personally, especially when looking back at his past performances.
Joey Chestnut Has Eaten Over 70.5 Hot Dogs Many Times In Recent Years
If we look at the past ten years of Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, Joey Chestnut has eaten over 70 hot dogs in six of the past ten years. Additionally, in one of those years he missed, he ate 70, and he was banned from competing for one year. So really, excluding those, the past says the odds of him eating more than 70.5 are greater than not.
Of course, Vegas oddsmakers crunch the numbers for a reason, and it is worth noting that Joey Chestnut ate exactly 70.5 hot dogs the previous year. Perhaps the math checks out that the odds are better that he'll do worse, despite my thinking otherwise.
What's Joey Chestnut's Record For Most Hot Dogs Eaten In Ten Minutes?
Another thing worth mentioning is that 70.5 hot dogs is nowhere close to the world record for hot dogs that Joey Chestnut has eaten in ten minutes. Those with a Netflix subscription may want to revisit Chestnut vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef, in which he squared off with former eating champion Takeru Kobayashi in 2024.
Under stricter guidelines that prohibited dunking food in water and removing the bun and dog and eating them separately, Chestnut ate 83 hot dogs. The feat pushed Kobayashi back into retirement and made Chestnut the unquestioned champion of the competitive eating scene.
He has yet to replicate that performance onstage at Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, but it stands to reason that if he could do it under stricter guidelines, he's past due for a performance that puts his total count back up in the upper 70s, if not north of 80. Will he do it? I guess we'll have to wait and see!
Tune in for the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on ABC at around 10:45 a.m. ET for the start of the women's competition, with the men's portion taking place around 12:30 p.m. ET. We'll see if the hot dog eating champ still has what it takes, or a new face will rise to topple his reign.
