Sports Bookie News Source: http://www.latimes.com/
Online Entertainment betting is giving new meaning to the term "Hollywood player."
By Josh Friedman, Times Staff Writer
June 5, 2006
Rita Embry of Miami won $100 from an online bookie last week. The 25-year-old graphic designer wasn't playing the ponies or betting on the NBA playoffs. She cashed in on a wager that "X-Men: The Last Stand" would take in more than $81.5 million its opening weekend.
Ashley Shiffrin, a 25-year-old paralegal who scans the entertainment odds during lunch breaks at the Manhattan law firm where she works, lost $50 at the same website, at betus.com, after she underestimated how many people would buy tickets to "X-Men." But she figures she's still ahead: A week earlier she won $132 by backing Taylor Hicks to become this year's "American Idol."
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Then there's Aly Lalani, a 30-year-old software marketer in Toronto. Having won $100 at betbet.com by taking "the under" on "The Da Vinci Code," Lalani says, he's hooked.
"They've turned me from a football and basketball bettor into a football, basketball and movie bettor," he said.
Fans such as these are giving new meaning to the term "Hollywood player." By putting their money where their entertainment hunches are, they are turning the weekend box-office derby — once followed mainly by studio executives and accountants — into a participatory sport.
Online entertainment betting, originally a novelty aimed at hyping the sports books during Oscar season, is on the rise. World Sports Exchange, which runs a gambling site at wsex.com, reports that its movie wagering volume jumped 26% last year. These days, the site takes $25,000 to $50,000 worth of bets on each weekend's box-office results.
Other sites have seen surges in entertainment betting, as people wager on events including the Academy Awards and last week's Scripps National Spelling Bee as well as on the not-so-private lives of celebrities.
The trend is partly an inevitable result of the growing number of betting sites that skirt U.S. laws by popping up in places such as Antigua and Costa Rica. (The Justice Department says online wagering violates U.S. law, but legal experts say it is unlikely bettors would be prosecuted.)
The popularity of such sites also reflects the global fascination with all things No. 1.
"Nobody seems to care about the old questions anymore: Is a film any good? Does it have cultural meaning?" said Robert Sklar, a cinema professor at New York University. "Now people ask: 'Will it come in above or below the predictions?' "
Sklar thinks plain old publicity is part of what's driving the shift from qualitative to quantitative cultural analysis. Once, most movie fans couldn't have found out the estimated weekend grosses if their lives depended on it. Now there's no escaping the box-office tallies.
Sites exploit the universality of this knowledge by playing on another fundamental human impulse — the desire to win.
Bettors win or lose based on whether a movie grosses over or under its line for the first three days: When BetUs.com set the target on the latest "X-Men" at $81.5 million, for example, everyone who bet the "over" won when ticket sales in the U.S. and Canada reached $102.8 million.
For the sites themselves, which have long catered to male sports fans, offering odds on pop culture is a way to lure women. Embry, the Miami designer, said she first heard of the pastime when she teased a male friend for spending too much time betting on sporting events online.
"He was like, 'What are you talking about? It's not just sports — you can bet on the sex of Angelina Jolie's baby or whatever,' " Embry recalled. "It was kind of a dare."
She didn't bet on the gender of Jolie's child with Brad Pitt, but she couldn't resist putting her predictions to the test with the new "X-Men" film. And once she'd placed a $100 bet that it would exceed expectations, she felt invested in the movie's success.
On opening night, Embry surveyed her local multiplex with satisfaction. "All the rows were packed with teeny-boppers," she said. "I was like, 'Fabulous!' "
The seeds of online box-office betting can be traced to 1997, when Century City-based Hollywood Stock Exchange began holding contests centered on movie grosses at its website, at hsx.com. To this day, however, the site's players vie only for bragging rights and logo-emblazoned prizes, not real money.
In April 2002, World Sports Exchange became the first online bookmaker to offer regular box-office betting, posting a line of $36 million on "The Scorpion King," starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
In the four years since, betting has expanded from the Rock to the ridiculous. At betonsports.com, players can try to predict, "What will happen to Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore by the end of 2007?"
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