Oscars Betting Odds & Nominations 2020
The 2020 Oscars, also known as the 92nd Academy Awards, took place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California, on Sunday, February 9th, 2020. The event honoured the best films of 2019 and saw performances from Janelle Monáe, the cast of Frozen II, Eminem, Elton John, and Billie Eilish. But who were the big winners?
Oscars Best Picture
| Parasite – Winner | Ford v Ferrari |
| The Irishman | Jojo Rabbit |
| Joker | Little Women |
| Marriage Story | 1917 |
Best Director
| Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) – Winner | Martin Scorsese (The Irishman) |
| Todd Phillips (Joker) | Sam Mendes (1917) |
Best Actor
| Joaquin Phoenix (Joker) – Winner | Antonio Banderas (Pain And Glory) |
| Adam Driver (Marriage Story) | Jonathan Pryce (The Two Popes) |
Best Actress
| Renée Zellweger (Judy) – Winner | Scarlett Johansson (Marriage Story) |
| Saorise Ronan (Little Women) | Charlize Theron (Bombshell) |
Finding Bets
If you’re considering betting on the Oscars, it’s important you understand that not all bookmakers will offer the bets listed above so you should try and find a betting site that offers wagers you’re interested in, whether that’s straightforward bets, overs and unders or prop bets.
If you’re interested in making prop bets, we suggest you visit bookmaker sites such as Betway, Betfair, Coral and Ladbrokes. You can discover more about them by clicking the reviews below. However, it’s important to note that betting on the Oscars won’t be available until closer to the event.
Betting On The Oscars
Punters love betting on the Oscars as its a great way to earn a little extra cash while having fun. Betting on the Oscars works in the same way as betting on sports games, you can wager on the ceremony at local betting shops or online, either on your computer, laptop or smartphone device.
If you’re new to the world of sports betting, you may be left confused when you realise you can’t find an Oscars category online like other sports. This is because Oscars bets are generally found under ‘Special’, ‘Entertainment’ and sometimes even ‘Novelty’.
Oscars Betting – How it Works
To make a bet, all you need to do is register at an online sportsbook or betting site which accepts Oscars bets. Once you’re logged in, you’ll need to navigate to the Oscars category, find the bet you wish to make, and select your predicted outcomes. You can even select multiple films, directors, or actors competing for the same award or select different nominees for each award.
After you’ve selected your predictions, you’ll need to enter your stake. The betting site should automatically display how much you’re likely to win if you’re correct, which is incredibly helpful. From there, all you need to do is click the ‘Place Bet’ or ‘Confirm’ buttons and then wait until the actual award show. All bets will be automatically paid out if correct.
The Available Bets
Similarly to sports games, there are several different forms of bets you can make. To newcomers, this can actually be fairly confusing, which is why we’ve decided to help out by listing some of the more common wagers and what they mean. Take a look below:
Future Winner
Some bookmakers may publish odds on Oscar winners before the nominations are announced. When this happens, you can wager on the nominee you believe will win, however, it’s important to understand that doing so before the nominations are announced is much harder but the payouts tend to be larger. Remember, this can only be done before the nominations are announced in January.
Outright Winner
The most common type of bet. With this bet, you simply select which nominee you believe will win a particular bet. You can select one nominee for each award or several, though we suggest you try not to.
Over/Under
Since several films have been nominated for multiple awards, some bookmakers allow you to bet on the number of awards they will win. With this bet, the bookmaker will present the number of awards they think the nominee will win and you will have to bet on whether the result will be higher or lower than the bookmaker’s prediction.
Proposition Bets
You can also make proposition bets, known as prop bets, which generally involve anything. This can include the length of the show, how many awards a nominee may win or a combination of events that occur during the ceremony.
For example, over on Coral and Ladbrokes, you can bet that one film or celebrity wins multiple awards or that select celebrities win awards at the ceremony. In addition, Betfair allows punters to wager on how many awards they think a film will win and which film will win the most Oscars. When you make prop bets, it’s important to understand that everything mentioned in the bet needs to happen during the ceremony for you to win.
Oscars Betting Odds
One thing that generally confuses people when it comes to betting are the odds. Odds basically tell punters the probability of their bet and how likely they are to win and most punters will attempt to calculate the odds in order to work out how likely they are to win. You can learn how to calculate the odds by visiting our dedicated page on sports betting.
However, bets on the Oscars are much easier to understand as bookmakers will place the nominees most likely to win at the top, often displaying the shortest odds. This makes it much easier to decide who to wager on as you can simply click one of the top nominees.
If you find that you still can’t select a nominee to wager on, you can always select two or three within the same category. If you do decide to do this, you have to remember that you will still lose money as there can only be one winner.
How Oscar Winners Are Selected
Oscar winners are voted on by the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences. The organisation, which is made up of 6,000 members and 17 different branches, are sent a nomination ballot for the ceremony where they rank their favourite five films within a category.
Members of the organisation are retired from or currently in the industry and can only vote on films within their branch. For example, directors vote for Best Director, Writers vote for Best Writer, a special panel of judges vote for Best Documentary or Foreign Film and so on. However, all members are required to vote for Best Picture.
An accountancy firm called PricewaterhouseCoopers who is responsible for tallying the votes uses a specific system to decide on official nominees. When tallying votes, which is apparently still done by hand, PricewaterhouseCoopers searches for a nominee that meets a magic number which is calculated by taking the total ballots for each category and dividing it by the total nominees plus one.
PricewaterhouseCoopers will then count the ballots until a nominee for each category hits the magic number with the most first-place votes. This nominee then becomes the first official Oscar nominee within its category. After this, the nominees with the fewest votes are removed and the ballots are recounted and nominees with the second-most votes become the second Oscar nominee within its category. This continues until all five nominee spots per category are filled.
Once all nominees are selected, Academy members are sent another ballot where they must select their favourite for each category. During this second vote, members are allowed to cast their vote in categories outside of their own branch but are suggested not to if they lack knowledge in it. After this, the votes are tallied once more and the awards are handed out during the night.
Our Oscars Tips
When you’re working out which Oscars nominee to wager on, one of the best things to do is check whether they’ve won any other awards. You’ll find that nominees who had won previous big awards such as the Critic’s Choice Awards, Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild Awards are more likely to win at the Oscars.
In fact, around 70% of Critics Choice Awards winners from the Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director and Best Picture categories win Oscar awards. Also, the winner of Best Actor at the Critic’s Choice has a 90% chance of winning an Oscar while the winner of Best Actress at the Screen Actors Guild’s Awards have 75% chance of winning an Oscar.
It’s also a good idea to follow Academy Award insiders on social media which may provide hints and tips about which nominee is most likely to win. If possible, it’s also good to try and watch the red carpet as many experts will give their own predictions here just in case you want to make any last-minute bets.
Oscars History
The Oscars date back to May 16, 1929, when it was a 15-minute ceremony. The event was broadcasted on the radio in 1930 and was televised for the first time in 1953. Now, several decades later, the event takes place every February and lasts several hours. To date, only three movies have won 11 awards in Academy Award history; 1959’s Ben-Hur, 1997’s Titanic and 2003’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. In addition, Return of the King is the only film in history which won an award for every nomination. Meanwhile, Walt Disney himself remains the person with the most Academy Awards with a total of 22. On top of that, 2018’s Black Panther made history after it became the first-ever superhero and comic book film to be nominated for Best Picture.
Oscars Odds & Nominations 2019
The 2019 Oscars, also known as the 91st Academy Awards, took place on Sunday, February 24th 2019, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, United States. The ceremony included performances from Adam Lambert and Queen, Kendrick Lamar and SZA, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, and many more. More importantly, it honoured and celebrated the best films of 2018. But who were the big winners?
Oscars Best Picture
| Roma – Winner | Green Book |
| The Favourite | Black Panther |
| BlacKkKlansmen | A Star Is Born |
| Bohemian Rhapsody | The Favourite |
Best Director
| Alfonso Cuaron (Roma) – Winner | Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman) |
| Adam McKay (Vice) | Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite) |
Best Actor
| Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody) – Winner | Christian Bale (Vice) |
| Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born) | Viggo Mortensen (Green Book) |
Best Actress
| Olivia Colman (The Favourite) – Winner | Glenn Close (The Wife) |
| Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born) | Yalitza Aparicio (Roma) |
Questions & Answers (FAQ)
When are the Oscars?
The Oscars take place annually, usually either at the end of February or the beginning of March. Since 2001, the Oscars has always been held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California.
Do Oscar winners get paid?
Nope! Oscars winners do not get paid any money or bonuses for winning these awards. However, they do get to take the coveted awards home where they can be displayed for all to see.
Who has won the most Oscars?
At the time of writing, Katharine Hepburn has won the most Oscars. The actress, who died in 2003, owns four Best Actress Osars. Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, Ingrid Bergman, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Walter Brennan all follow with three Oscar awards each.
Can you watch the Oscars live?
Yes. The Oscars are televised in the US on American broadcasting channel ABC. In the UK, the ceremony is usually televised on channels such as Sky Cinema or it can be streamed from several websites.
How did the Oscars get its name?
The Academy Awards adopted the name ‘Oscars’ back in 1939 and there have been several disputes over the origin of the ceremony’s name. Some of the award’s origin stories include; Bette Davis, a president of the Academy in the 1940s, naming the award after first husband Harmon Oscar Nelson; Academy Executive Secretary Margaret Herrick naming the award because it reminded her of her cousin; and columnist Sidney Skolsky who reported that employees named the award in a newspaper, marking the first newspaper reference to the name.