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On February 23rd, John Richards traveled more than 100 miles to bet on the Oscars. He took a train from Washington, D.C., to Wilmington, Delaware, then hopped into an Uber car that took him to a truck stop in New Jersey.
Once in the state, where betting is legal, he opened the DraftKings, FanDuel and Bet365 apps and spent about $1,800 on a series of bets. Lily Gladstone won Best Actress, Best Visual Effects went to “The Creator,” and Best Makeup went to “Maestro.” , Best Animated Film Award went to “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” Best Sound Award went to “Oppenheimer,” and Best Sound Award went to “The War is Over!” “Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko” won Best Animated Short Film.
Richards, 40, a statistician for the film awards fantasy league site Red Carpet Roster, has been betting on the Oscars since 2016. He had already bet $2,750 on the prize before going to the New Jersey truck stop. Award of the year. In addition to placing multiple bets on Ms. Gladstone, he placed a $70 bet on Emma Stone as a hedge.
Mr. Richards is one of a growing number of Oscar gamblers scattered around the world. In the United States, where gambling is regulated at the state level, seven states allow Oscar gambling: Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, and New Jersey. However, sports betting is allowed in 38 states and the District of Columbia. It became legal in 2018 after the Supreme Court overturned a 1992 law that banned sports betting. Later that year, the first Oscar market was held in New Jersey.
Because the outcome of a sports match is not known before the match, allowing bets on a sports match is considered less risky than betting on an awards ceremony, where the outcome is predetermined. His PwC, the accounting firm formerly known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, tallies the Academy Awards votes. According to the Academy’s website, only two PwC partners know the results before they are announced at the Oscars ceremony. A PwC spokesperson said that employees who have access to confidential information generally must not use that information for personal gain.
The American Gaming Association, the main industry group for casinos, doesn’t collect data on Oscar gambling, so it’s unclear how much Americans bet on the Oscars, but the association does say Americans bet on casinos like DraftKings and BetMGM. They estimate that they spent $10.26 billion on legitimate online sportsbooks. .
BetMGM, which facilitates legal Oscar betting in four U.S. states, Ontario and Puerto Rico, said more than half of this year’s Oscar bets were placed on Best Picture. 69% of these bets were on “Oppenheimer” who opened at +800 in June 2023 (so a $100 bet would have earned him $800 plus the amount invested) Masu). The currently popular “Oppenheimer” is trading at -3,000 (meaning he needs to bet $3,000 to win $100).
Richards watches all nominated films before placing his bets. “I like to trust my instincts,” he said. “I like to use mathematics to support my intuition.”
That’s how he won $200 on a bet on 2016’s Best Picture underdog, “Moonlight.” Similarly, I bet on his 2022 Best Picture nominee “CODA,” where the odds were 25-1 against him. That year, he won almost $10,000. whole. It’s a completely different approach from the way he and other athletes bet, where statistics come first and intuition comes second.
Brett Abarbanel, executive director of the International Gaming Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said Oscar gambling is not a new phenomenon. “There are betting sites and markets in Europe that have been betting on the Academy Awards for decades,” she says.
BetUS, an offshore sportsbook based in Costa Rica, has been offering Oscar betting for 20 years. “We’ve really seen it grow exponentially over the last two to three years,” said Tim Williams, BetUS’ director of public relations. “During the Academy Awards, we will probably take bets from more than half the countries on the planet.”
Many Americans rely on offshore books, which are a legal gray area in the United States. Their legality varies by state. “Some people believe that both sides of the activity are illegal, while others treat only the service provider as the illegal actor,” Abarbanel said. Williams said the growing popularity of Oscar gambling is due to the growth of the legal gambling market in the United States, but most do not allow Oscar gambling because the outcome of the Oscars is predetermined. Ta.
Betting on art is more of a numbers game than betting on sports. Outside of precursor award shows like the Golden Globes, there’s no need to ponder statistics like RBIs or TDs, no injury reports or past games to set a precedent. Williams said the chances of winning are determined by researching industry trends, critical reviews and social media. Once set, “the odds will change depending on how the customer bets,” Williams said. “Our goal as a sportsbook is to place bets at approximately the same rate on all options. And we achieve that by adjusting the odds.” This year with Christopher Nolan Oppenheimer is definitely coming, Williams said.
But Williams said Oscar bets aren’t profitable for BetUS, and the company often loses money on bets each year. “If we were in retail, I think they would be called loss leaders,” Williams said.
Odds can change quickly. Chris Steckman, who lives in West Hollywood, Calif., and is a legal consultant for a fashion company betting on the Oscars, has chosen Fantasia for “The Color Purple” as a Best Actress nominee for the offshore sports show Bovada in September. He pointed out that Barrino was there. However, after that, Barrino was not nominated. Her current favorite is Lily Gladstone.
Mr. Steckman, 33, said he had never lost a year betting on the Oscar. He earns $2,500 to $4,000 each year. This year he bet about $1,500.
“I love betting on the Oscars because it forces me to watch movies I wouldn’t otherwise watch,” Steckman said. For advice, he also follows his Gold Derby, an Oscar prediction website where users can vote, a subreddit called OscarRace, and a podcast called “The Next Best Picture.” “It’s not a perfect science,” he said.
A cottage industry of Oscar tipsters and podcasts has sprung up to dispense advice. This includes the podcast “Lights Camera What’s the Action?” hosted by Tony Coca his cola (stage name) and friends. Tony Coca-Cola has been betting on the Academy Awards in Australia since 2005.
“It’s like taking the annual Oscar prize money up a notch,” he said. Tony Coca-Cola and his friends didn’t take the gamble too seriously. “You bet on who you want to win. That’s a surefire way to lose money,” he says. “But the more we did it, the more we realized that bookmakers didn’t really understand what they were doing in these entertainment markets.” He and his friends told Variety I try to beat the house by reading magazines and The Hollywood Reporter, checking out the Gold Derby, and analyzing the critics.
For advice, Richards, a statistician, turns to Ben Theusmer, author of awards such as SAGS and Oscarmetrics, which created a mathematical Oscar prediction model.
“I don’t support gambling,” Zausmer said. “I personally don’t bet on the Oscars.” But the Oscar betting market is one element of his predictive model. “Study after study has shown that gambling markets play a role in crowd wisdom, and that crowd wisdom tends to have some predictive power in many areas, not just the Oscars,” he said. Told.
What does the industry think about Oscar gambling? Gabriel Rothman, a sociology professor at UCLA, doesn’t think it’s a hot topic. (The Academy declined to comment.) Dr. Rothman said the film industry lobbied to block the existence of another gambling market in 2010. Hollywood Stock Exchange is a prediction website where people vote on the value of movies and celebrities. After industry backlash, it continued as a virtual game with no funds involved.
Nevertheless, Dr. Rothman says the bet could be a positive for Oscar. “Anything that brings attention to the Oscars is going to be a good thing for them, because public interest in the Oscars has declined so much,” he said.
Legal Oscar bets are limited, so bettors looking to wager tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars turn to illegal offshore books and prediction markets.
A man who goes by the gambling name Nude Egg, who asked to remain anonymous to keep his personal life separate from his gambling life, said he bets between $100,000 and $150,000 on the Oscars. Funds are spread across 30 sportsbooks and several prediction markets. He recently quit his job and became a full-time gambler.
In 2021, he won $28,000 betting on the Oscars. “I try to bet on every category every year, including his three categories of short films, which are sometimes the categories I bet on the most because most people don’t know anything about these films. ” he said. He says it’s wise not to watch the nominated films so as not to let personal bias creep into his betting decisions, but he’s not heeding his own advice. “I’m a movie buff,” he said. “I’m just trying my best to detach from my emotions.”
Not all Oscar bettors take the market that seriously. Some people place small bets to enjoy the show even more.
“Award shows can take a long time, but when there’s money at stake, you invest more,” said Matt Pondiscio, 26, a self-proclaimed “art kid” who lives in New Jersey and bets starting at $5. Ta. He up to $10 per category.
Pondiscio, a former film major, joined the Oscars bet on DraftKings in 2018 after being informed of the availability of Oscar bets by fraternity brothers who were betting on NFL games. Mr. Pondiscio has yet to win any money betting on the Oscar, having bet about $500 over the years and getting back about $300.
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