Online Casinos Offering Reality TV Gambling
Online casinos offer chance to pick TV show winners
Melissa Brown is betting that Chris Daughtry will be the next American Idol.
Literally.
She wagered $50 online on the bald aspiring rocker.
”I think it’s going to be Chris,” said Brown, 29, a website designer from Braintree, who for the past year has been placing online bets on reality TV shows at betus.com, a sports gambling site better known for taking NFL and college basketball bets. ”If the guys could do sports, I could do entertainment. I bet on what I watch, the reality shows.”
The idea of betting on reality TV takes water-cooler chat to a new level. These viewers are willing to put money on who will sashay down the final runway on UPN’s ”America’s Next Top Model,” walk away with a cushy job for the Donald, or emerge as the next Carrie Underwood. With ”American Idol” clocking its best ratings ever, and reality shows’ latest developments serving as conversation starters at work, home, and bars, the trend may have been inevitable.
Online casinos began noticing people betting with one another on who they thought would survive another week or go all the way, and they’ve been offering entertainment betting on their websites for the past couple of years. Though online gambling is against US law, casinos can set up websites anywhere in the world, and Americans are placing wagers on them regardless of legal issues. The casinos say the business is growing steadily.
”People identify with everyday people making it,” says Matthew Ross, a spokesman for the Antigua-based betus.com, which offers bets on ”American Idol,” the Oscars, and ”Big Brother.” ”They are fanatics.”
The US Justice Department considers it illegal for Americans to place bets on websites, even if they’re sites based in other countries. Federal officials rarely go after individual bettors but focus on the sites themselves. In January, after federal prosecutors investigated an online sports gambling site in St. Louis, site officials agreed to pay a $4.2 million fine. And the Justice Department has prosecuted Americans with financial ties to offshore gambling sites.
”Our view is that the illegal activity is happening not only where the bets are taken [offshore] but where the bets are placed [in the United States],” says Jaclyn Lesch, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department.
When it comes to foreign online casinos with no US ties, however, prosecution is more difficult. The Justice Department can interfere with the casinos’ advertising and banking in the United States, and arrest the operators if they travel here. But the sheer growth of gambling sites — and Americans’ participation in them — has stirred debate over whether these anti-gambling laws are enforceable. One study found that Americans represent one-third of the 23 million online gamblers globally.
Websites usually cap betting on reality shows at anywhere from $100 to $500. They structure the payouts depending on which contestants are considered more likely to win — just as in sporting events.
”It’s like a horse race — you have your long shots and you have your favorites,” says Michael Schroeter, a marketing manager for the Antigua-based betwwts.com, which began taking bets on reality TV shows a few years ago and says such betting is a growing component of the site. ”[Viewers] are making friendly bets between themselves. Why not let people bet on the shows? We are offering them the chance to do that for themselves.”
On sportsbook.com, which is headquartered in London, Chris Daughtry was considered an ”American Idol” favorite this week, getting odds of 7:5, and Bucky Covington was a long shot, with odds of 100:1. The average bet there is $60. On betus.com, bets were being placed this week on who will win ”Survivor: Panama,” with castaways Shane and Cirie considered the favorites.
Reality-show betting can pose distinctive problems. At least twice, people with inside information have apparently attempted to take advantage of their knowledge. Last year sportsbook.com suspended betting on CBS’s ”The Amazing Race” after company officials noticed heavy betting on one team and assumed that someone had information about the results of the show, which was taped in advance. Three years ago Costa Rica-based bodog.com halted betting on ”Survivor” after officials learned that CBS employees were betting on the show’s outcome.
”We generally do put a cap on the reality stuff, because there can be a lot of inside information floating around,” says Alex Czajkowski, a marketing director for sportsbook.com. To eliminate that problem, some online casinos offer bets only on shows that air their episodes live.
Melissa Brown says she has netted about $300 from her online betting on reality shows. She wants to bet on her favorite programs, such as MTV’s ”The Gauntlet II” and ”America’s Next Top Model,” but for now she’s sticking with ”American Idol.”
”I’m definitely not a huge ‘American Idol’ fan,” she says. ”I watch it now because I have money on it.”
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/04/01/
bettors_go_for_a_reality_check/
