Oscars betting: How sportsbooks calculate predictions, and how many awards they got right

New York Times

04-03-2025

'Anora' took down best picture honors on Sunday during the 97th Academy Awards ceremony. The movie was the -200 betting favorite going into the event that most refer to as the Oscars. Yes, you read that last sentence right. You can now legally bet on non-sports-related events like the Oscars, depending on the state in which you reside.
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BetMGM has offered odds on the spectacle for the last two years (BetMGM told The Athletic that the odds are offered only in Massachusetts, Ontario and Puerto Rico), as have other legal sportsbooks in the United States since the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, better known as PASPA, was repealed. And media companies like ours create fun content to gamify the Academy Awards, as our very own pop-culture queen Hannah Vanbiber did.
'The Oscars markets provide an opportunity for players to wager on events outside the normal scope of sports betting,' Seamus Magee, trading manager at BetMGM, told The Athletic.
While betting on the award show might seem crazy to some, people have been wagering on the Oscars long before the legalization of gambling allowed sportsbooks to offer odds for things like this.
Johnny Avello, sportsbook director at DraftKings and a self-proclaimed movie buff who noted to The Athletic that 'he tries to see them all,' has been having fun with Oscars odds for over four decades.
'A guy I used to work with named Lenny Del Genio was doing hypothetical Oscars odds back in the late 80s,' Avello said. 'After he left for another job in Washington, I started putting out those odds for entertainment purposes in the early 90s, and people started talking about it, as did the media.'
Avello immediately noticed that the odds drew a crowd of people looking to have fun with predictions, so he started throwing Oscar-themed parties at Bally's and the Wynn.
'We would pack the house,' Avello recalled. 'We had these contests during the breaks where people in the audience voted and won prizes. It was so much fun. We did that for many years and gave out Oscar trophies and show tickets to the winners.'
After being a stalwart in the industry for a really long time, Avello came over to DraftKings in 2018 during the post-PASPA boom. In 2019, Avello was able to offer Academy Awards odds to the masses at DraftKings, and the book has embraced the annual occasion ever since.
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We asked him a few questions about how it all works.
How does DraftKings create odds for the highly viewed event, considering the topic is so subjective?
'We're up on this pretty well as a team, and we post categories long before the nominations come out,' Avello told The Athletic. 'As for the odds, it's a combination of our own opinions, due diligence and looking at what the experts are putting out there. Overall, we use our own resources, and once some of the experts come out, we see what they are thinking and saying, especially GoldDerby, Variety and IndieWire.'
Another indicator that Avello and his team rely on is performance at the season's prior award shows. Take the best picture category, for instance.
''Anora' started as a 4-1 underdog, but once it won the Producers Guild, people started betting on it, and we dropped the odds pretty quickly,' Avello said. 'Despite the adjustment, we took a ton of late money on it.'
'Anora' went into the night as the most popular pick among fans to win best picture at BetMGM — highest ticket percentage at 26.6 percent and highest handle percentage at 80.9 percent — and FanDuel and DraftKings.
It still fascinates me that people wager on the Oscars. I've bet on some crazy things, but never the Academy Awards with real money. Which led me to my next question:
Do people actually bet on the Oscars? And, if so, how does the handle compare to, say, an NFL game?
'People enjoy betting on the Oscars, Grammys and Emmys, but you can't compare something like this to the big four sports or a football game,' Avello said, laughing at my question. 'If you really want to compare, I would say the handle for the Academy Awards is closer to a NASCAR race.'
So, how did the book do overall this year?
Quite well in terms of picking the winner. Per Hannah's math, of the 23 awards given out Sunday night, 17 winners were betting favorites. Only six underdogs won, and four of those were the second favorite in the odds. The biggest underdogs were the animated short 'In the Shadow of the Cypress' at +1600 odds and the live-action short 'I'm Not a Robot' at +1000 odds.
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In terms of making money, Avello says the favorite winning Best Picture didn't pay out for the sportsbook.
'We lost [money] on Best Picture, and that category always has the biggest handle,' Avello stated. 'That said, we did well overall thanks to the Best Actress and Best Actor categories specifically and throughout the 23 categories.'
The star of 'Anora,' Mikey Madison, upset the favorite for best actress, Demi Moore. Adrien Brody was favored to win best actor and did, but second-favorite Timothée Chalamet received a slight majority of the bets.
So, will I be betting on the Oscars next year?
Yes, with the help of Hannah's cheatsheet, of course. She went 18-5!
As someone once said, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
(Photo of Mikey Madison and Alex Coco: Monica Schipper / Getty Images)