The Art of Betting on the Oscars

Sports betting is great fun because there are literally no limits to the number of games and sports you can place bets on. There are a large number of sports books – land-based as well as online – that allow you to place bets on the possible outcomes in different games of your favourite sport.

You could bet on the outcome of a match in the English Premier League for example, and then also simultaneously place a bet on a NBA game. Wagers are also placed at online sports books as well as land-based majors not only on games and sports but also on important events, including the US Presidential election and Awards for TV and Movies these are usually termed as “novelty bets“.

The Oscars are the most popular and glitzy of all Hollywood events. Awards are given out to actors, technicians, directors, and members of literally each and every cog in the giant film-making wheel.

And so it is only natural for people to want to bet on the results for a given year and for sports books and punters to facilitate such placing of bets. So how does betting on the Oscars work?

Is it the same as regular sports betting or is there some difference between the two? We will discuss each of these aspects of Oscar-related betting in this blog.

The Basics of Betting on the Oscars

The Academy Awards, popularly referred to as “the Oscars“, are bestowed on exceptional performers from the film fraternity in Hollywood every year. Each year there are different movies shortlisted for awards in different categories, from the technical to the creative and art categories and in each category a winner is chosen from the nominees. This makes betting on the possible outcomes in each category for each year a very tempting and juicy proposition.

How Betting on the Oscars is Not the Same as Regular Sports Betting

One thing to know: betting on the Oscars differs slightly from the regular sports betting that you may have indulged in at some point or are a great fan of. The fundamental difference is in the availability of information. When it comes to the Oscars information is readily available and predetermined, unlike in sports betting where you have to work with incomplete details and data. There is of course data available in sports betting to make predictions on which to base your wagering on; however that is all you are capable of doing – predicting a possible outcome, and that sounds very shifty and hollow a premise to wager money on.

When it comes to the Oscars you have a lot of information to play with. For instance, all votes by the voters are submitted a fair while before the presentation of the actual awards themselves. There is usually more than a month between the announcement of the nominations in the various categories and the final tallying of the votes, with the actual awards ceremony scheduled further down the road.

What does the above effectively mean? It means that as a bettor you have over a month in which to collect and sift through vote-related data to base your wager on. This also allows you to wager smart – you can place your bets when the odds are more in your favour; placing the wager at the right moment is important when it comes to determining how much you could possibly win.

For instance, placing a wager when the odds are 20:1 will give you a different payout than when you place it with the odds at 1:1. Having all the data beforehand allows you to make those crucial decisions comfortably.

Betting at the Oscars: Parameters to Look Out For

When it comes to betting at the Oscars, there are definitely indicators and parameters to look out for; these could help you zero in on the possible winner and also thereby allow you to figure out who and which movies you want to place your wagers on. The following are three important parameters to look out for when it comes to Oscar betting.

Vanity Fair

Listening to the Chatter Around

Sometimes a very good indicator may be the chatter around a movie, say in the form of critics’ reviews and other elements like the credibility and brand value of the director. This is the easiest thing to follow and is seasonal, usually. The chatter builds up as the Oscar season approaches. Apart from critics’ ratings other elements that make up chatter include panel discussions and general feedback within the circuit in Hollywood.

Checking the Trend on Winner’s Odds from Previous Years

Another bit of information to go through data relating to wins over the previous years. It is highly possible that such a study would throw up a pattern that helps in zeroing in on who you would bet on to win in a specific category. Online bookmaker Sports Interaction has actually listed out the data on the opening and closing odds for Oscar winners in 2016. From the data provided, one thing becomes clear: results at the Oscars are usually along expected lines. That makes it even more important to track market data; it will help eliminate or highlight potential winners better.

Tracking Performances at Various Awards

When it comes to placing your bets on who is likely to win at the Oscars, it is not necessary to track just that single award ceremony and data relating to it. Another important parameter is the performance of a movie and its cast and crew at some of the other notable award ceremonies that are held as lead-up events to the Oscars.

This makes for a great strategy, because then you do not have just the data from the Oscar votes for the month prior to the announcement to look at; you can actually track the performance of a movie for months. While there are a number of award ceremonies and red carpet events that happen, the three that are most important to determining Oscar performance for a movie are the following:

• The Golden Globes
• Screen Actors Guild (SAG)
• Critics’ Choice

The accuracy in predicting a winner based on cumulative data from all these 3 organisations is a very high 70%. And even if you consider only data from the Critics’ Choice and Golden Globes events, the accuracy is a reasonably high 60%. There are picks from individual events too; for instance 16 recipients of the 22 recipients of the Best Director award at the Critics’ Choice awards have ended up winning the honours at the Oscars as well.

There is a good reason why tracking these three makes sense when it comes to figuring out the right bets at the Oscars: because members at these organisations usually overlap each other: a member of the SAG would also possibly be a member of the Golden Globes, for instance. So there will generally be consistency in the outcome.