American Idol Betting – Picking Winners and Contract Rules

Reality television rules are not set in stone. A contestant that is “out” can be brought back on and several winners or no winners can be declared. Tradesports has attempted to take that into account in their American Idol contracts.

The margin requirements and payouts make these tricky to trade profitably. All of the Outright Winner contracts remain open until the final winner has been announced to take into account that a contestant can be brought back. No matter how good you are at picking winners the margin will be tied up for a while. Fortunately there is a “Sent Home This Week” contract but it has much less volume than the Outright Winner ones.

The biggest gotcha would be if two winners or more winners were declared, according to the Contract Rules on Tradesports, “Should there be two official winners, both relevant contracts will expire at 50. Should there be three official winners the relevant contracts will expire at 33 etc.” How betting sites that give straight odds will handle the above scenarios is unclear.

Recent Articles and Resources

This New York Times article discussed some interesting handicapping techniques. The most accurate one seems to be DialIdol.com which counts the times a contestants line is busy. The harder is it to get through, the more votes the contestant is getting. This site is a must for Idol bettors.

Hitwise is also mentioned in the article and measures and contestants internet popularity. Although it predicted the bottom three last week, it is not a real time measure. The votes are directly related to that night’s performance, it would be hard to pick winners using this.

http://www.realitytvmagazine.com/blog/american_idol/index.html Follows the contest and even makes some bold gambling predictions. Worth a read.

http://www.gambling911.com/American-Idol-News.html Its exactly what the URL looks like, but doesn’t focus on prediction markets.