In the 1940s, the publicist Henry C. Rogers decided to spread a lie.
He told everyone who would listen that Las Vegas bookmakers had made Joan Crawford the favorite to win the Oscar for best actress for her role in “Mildred Pierce.”
It turned out the rumor was “self-fulfilling but false,” The New York Times would later write in his obituary. But Rogers, who would build a Hollywood public relations machine, had tapped into something: People wanted to project who would win at the Academy Awards — and many wanted to wager on it.
This year more than $120 million has changed hands in Oscars-related bets on prediction markets, the trendy way to bet on almost anything, including sports, politics, economics and the existence of aliens.
Entering the weekend, Kalshi gave “Golden” from “KPop Demon Hunters” an 86 percent chance of winning best original song. Polymarket, whose odds were promoted onscreen during this year’s Golden Globes, projected that Amy Madigan (“Weapons,” 47 percent) would edge out Teyana Taylor (“One Battle After Another,” 31 percent) and Wunmi Mosaku (“Sinners,” 17 percent) in an unsettled best supporting actress race.
Someone trying to fill out an office pool at the last minute before Sunday’s ceremony might appreciate the crowdsourced data, especially for opaque categories like best documentary short film. But the wisdom of the crowds has not won over the professional pundits who parse the 24 Oscars races.
“Kind of awful,” Glenn Whipp, the columnist for The Envelope at The Los Angeles Times, said of prediction markets, calling them a scourge that stains awards season and enables addiction.
“Don’t use them,” said Nate Jones, who writes the Oscar Futures column at Vulture. “Probably never will.”
“I don’t think they are correct,” said Anne Thompson, the editor at large at IndieWire and a longtime awards maven. “I don’t take them seriously any more than I take online predictions or Twitter instant reactions.”
Awards experts — The New York Times also has a writer dedicated to awards coverage — emphasized that human expertise built over many years distinguishes what they do from prediction markets. Do armchair wagerers know how the demographics of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have shifted? Do they know about the voting body’s reluctance to crown a young person as best actor (cc: Timothée Chalamet, 30, nominated for “Marty Supreme”)? Have they even bothered to watch the movies?
“I don’t think there’s anyone at these prediction markets who are seeing as many films or talking to as many voters or are as aware of the relevance of certain stats over others as we are,” said Scott Feinberg, who leads The Hollywood Reporter’s awards coverage. “I think that these markets are drawing a lot of their standings from us.”
Those who support prediction markets disagree. Because people are putting money on the line to wager that a particular outcome will happen, supporters say, the collective information produces real insight.
After the Golden Globes, Shayne Coplan, the chief executive of Polymarket, posted on social media that its markets had correctly picked 26 of the night’s 28 winners.
“We have a long way to go to educate the public on the value of market-based forecasts, but you can’t deny its accuracy,” he wrote. “People have more clarity about the world because Polymarket exists.”
Much like sports fans who bet on the color of the Gatorade poured on the Super Bowl-winning coach, cinephiles can even predict what words will be spoken during the Oscars telecast. Entering the weekend, Polymarket’s odds had “Netflix” at 89 percent, “Epstein” at 45 percent and “Polymarket” at 19 percent. (Although the platform is licensed to operate in the United States, at the moment it only offers sports bets domestically.)
Gold Derby, a prominent awards website founded in 2000, also aggregates data before spitting out the percentage chance that a given nominee will win. But it relies, in part, on the predictions of experts.
Some awards experts, especially those in Los Angeles, draw their conclusions from talking directly to academy members. Others rely on historical data and precursor awards shows, building models to draw conclusions. And a third group, contended Jones, assesses the zeitgeist and picks based on vibes.
“We’re all just looking at the same things,” Jones said, noting that predictions markets are not particularly useful for his job at Vulture. “I don’t think they’re telling me anything that I don’t know.”
At the end of the day, he said, “all of Oscar punditry is a pseudoscience.”
Days before the Oscars, the markets were very much in line with the conventional wisdom in categories like best picture, best actress and best original screenplay. But best live action short? Gold Derby had “A Friend of Dorothy” as a 47 percent favorite, while Kalshi and Polymarket both preferred “Two People Exchanging Saliva.”
It is that unusual delta on an obscure category that piques the curiosity of some experts.
Shortly before last month’s British Academy Film Awards, Pete Hammond, Deadline’s awards columnist and chief film critic, saw that a betting odds aggregator was suggesting Robert Aramayo had a 25 percent chance to win best actor for “I Swear.” The projection was so striking — Aramayo was ahead of Leonardo DiCaprio and every other nominee except for Chalamet — that Hammond noted it in a column. Then the upset happened.
That experience leveraging data from a nontraditional source, Hammond said, caused him to give prediction markets “a little more credence.” It was impossible to escape them, he and others noted, while watching the Golden Globes, which flashed Polymarket odds across the screen before several awards.
Polymarket did not respond to a request for comment. In a news release, Craig Perreault, the president of Penske Media Corporation, which co-owns the Globes — and owns Gold Derby, IndieWire, The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline — said the partnership “unlocks a groundbreaking new frontier, redefining how audiences engage with and connect to the content they love.”
Some saw it differently. Whipp compared this year’s Globes telecast to “a continuous gambling ad” that he found “appalling.” Was it really necessary, others wondered, for nominees to learn while scrolling on their phones that they had a 96 percent chance of going home empty-handed? “These people who are going to lose anyway are losing twice,” Hammond said.
Like the proliferation of legalized sports gambling, the increased attention on prediction markets has heightened concerns about insider trading.
All rounds of Oscars voting are done by secret online ballot tabulated by an independent accounting firm, the academy says. Only three partners at the firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, know the results before the envelopes are opened.
Although the code of conduct for academy members does not specifically refer to betting, officials say members are expected to act with professionalism and integrity. The academy declined to discuss any measures it puts in place to guard against leaks.
Debra Birnbaum, the editor of Gold Derby, said she did not view the prediction markets as competition. Because the platforms present information that often mirrors Gold Derby’s projections, she said, they are something that “reinforces our authority.”
Everyone loves to talk about declining ratings for award shows, Birnbaum said, so anything that can get more people engaged is a good thing.
“If this is another way to do it,” she said, “welcome to the party.”
Matt Stevens is a Times reporter who writes about arts and culture from Los Angeles.
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