Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Chicago is more likely to win the four-city race to host the 2016 Olympic Games after Barack Obama was elected U.S. president, bookmakers say.

William Hill, the U.K.'s second-largest bookmaker, cut Obama's hometown to 11-10 from 6-4 to get the Games when International Olympic Committee members vote Oct. 2 next year, spokesman Graham Sharpe said by telephone.

Chicago, the bookmakers' favorite even before the U.S. election, is vying with Madrid, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro to host the first summer Olympics in the U.S. since the 1996 Atlanta Games.

Obama gave his victory speech before about 125,000 people in Chicago's Grant Park on Nov. 4. He returned there the next day to celebrate with twice as many followers.

``It definitely gives a real boost for the Chicago bid,'' Nick Weinberg, a spokesman for Ladbrokes, the biggest publicly traded gaming company, said in an e-mail.

In recent months, Betfair, the U.K.'s largest internet gambling site, has seen a correlation between betting on Obama to win the election and wagers on Chicago's bid, spokesman Jamie Pacheco said by telephone.

With London-based William Hill not accepting wagers from citizens in the U.S., where betting is illegal in most states, there hasn't be a surge of bets, Sharpe said.

``We've had bits and pieces of interest,'' Sharpe said. ``But people here are more interested in the London Olympics.''

The 2012 Olympics will be in London.

Because there are fewer bets placed, it would take ``hundreds of pounds'' of wagers to move the market for 2016 Games betting, compared with ``hundreds of thousands'' of pounds for a match in English soccer's Premier League, Pacheco said

Tokyo is second-favorite with William Hill at 9-4, followed by Rio at 7-2 and Madrid at 12-1.

An IOC delegation is scheduled visit the four cities to assess their bids before members vote in Copenhagen in October.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Duff in Madrid at at aduff4@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 7, 2008 08:44 EST