2018 Golden Globe Awards Television Betting Odds
–The 2018 Golden Globe Awards will take place on Sunday, January 7 2018
–2018 will be the 75th Golden Globe Awards
–The award winners are selected by members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association(HFPA)
Since this site is called ‘Sports Betting Experts’ I try to use sports metaphors as often as possible, even on ‘non-sport’ betting events. For the entertainment industry the Academy Awards is the ‘Super Bowl’ of awards show. Obviously, this means that the film industry enjoys a higher degree of status than their television counterparts (though the gap is closing quickly). The major TV awards are the Emmy Awards which don’t take place until September. For that reason, we’ll focus more on the predictive dynamic of the film awards since the Golden Globe Awards kick off the season of smaller film awards from a variety of critics groups and professional trade associations. These are similar to the Kentucky Derby Qualifying races and helpful to watch just to get a feel for which contenders are legit.
If we were to use the football metaphor about the Golden Globe Awards it would strictly be a more entertaining version of a preseason game. A more appropriate description–it’s a watered down version of those great ‘Celebrity Roasts’ that Dean Martin used to do in the 1970’s only with awards handed out. Or at least that’s how it was in the past. It’ll be interesting to see the ‘mood of the room’ and the American film industry in general in the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment fiasco. Will the Golden Globes be back to their business of boozy fun as usual? Will it still be a party only with everyone keeping their hands to themselves? Or has the entire power dynamic in Hollywood change forever and the Golden Globes will adopt the self important and holier than thou smugness of the Academy Awards?
REALLY, DO THE GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS MATTER?
Do these awards even matter? Yes and no. ‘The Industry’ likes them since it’s a great way to promote a film. An otherwise overlooked film could benefit from a marketing campaign chortling about ‘5 Golden Globe Nominations’ above the title. At one point, the Golden Globes were considered a predictive indicator for several of the Academy Award categories though that’s never really been the case. In past years, the Golden Globes has helped to set the front runner which is a dubious honor. As we witnessed last year with ‘La La Land’ several months between now and the Academy Awards is enough time for the media to ‘turn’ on a film and lead a sizable percentage of Academy voters with them. The primary gripe about the Golden Globe Awards is that they’re selected by a small, insular group of about 90 entertainment industry journalists based in Southern California. They select the nominees and the winners and given the homogeneous nature of the voters and the ‘small sample size’ it doesn’t really do anything to approximate what the Academy Awards voters might do.
This is where the fun begins. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) bequeaths the Golden Globe Awards and they’ve been accused of a bias toward big stars. This is for purely selfish, though admittedly practical reasons–it helps get more ‘A Listers’ to attend the awards and they like hanging out with celebrities. To be honest, I have a hard time questioning that logic given the position they’re in. To their credit, the Academy Awards has always tried to focus on the performance and not the ‘star power’ of the nominees. That’s why 80 year old Jessica Tandy won ‘Best Actress’ for ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ and Kathy Bates won for ‘Misery’. With all due respect to the considerable talents of these two women if I’m voting for someone to party with I’ll go with Natalie Portman.
BOOZY FUN FOR THE WHOLE SHOW BIZ FAMILY
Historically, the crux of the Golden Globes’ appeal for TV viewers, celebrities, journalists, industry types, has been it’s light hearted (ie: drunken) nature. It’s just a lot more fun than most awards shows. Back when celebrities and the general public understood their role, celebrities were expected to show up to any awards show drunk and/or strung out on drugs. In the 70’s everybody was on drugs. Even the ‘old school’ celebrities that your parents liked were heavy drinkers. That continued into the 80’s but today it’s considered an affront to the gravitas of the entertainment industry. It’s reached the point that even being drunk at the Grammy Awards gets a lot of judgmental whispers and gossip posing as concern. It wasn’t that long ago that every musician from Frank Sinatra to Stevie Wonder would show up under the influence of drugs and drinks like they were Slash and Duff McKagan of Guns’n’Roses at the American Music Awards back in the ‘Appetite For Destruction’ era. Now, it’s all boring corporate drivel with the sort of decadent behavior you’d expect at a multilevel marketing convention in the San Fernando Valley. Even MTV has joined the ‘no fun’ fray–when Pink gave a rambling, drunken acceptance speech at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards she was criticized and castigated by MTV on air ‘talent’, the media and her peers.
Historically, all of Hollywood and the entertainment media were in on this and liked the fact that the vibe wasn’t as uptight and the booze flowed freely. USA TODAY called the Golden Globes “the award season’s booziest night of stars and acceptance speeches”. They went on to explain the difference between the Academy Awards and the Golden Globe Awards: “The Academy Awards is the most prestigious of the awards shows. The three-hour Golden Globes, on the other hand, is a place where stars can try out fashion, sample parts of speeches and, frankly, get drunk.” The Daily Beast called it ‘the Oscars drunk, corrupt cousin.” Even a reasonably serious actress like Cate Blanchett admitted she was drunk during her Golden Globes acceptance speech.
SO WHAT HAPPENS NOW?
The Academy Awards is so tightly run it feels choreographed. The appeal of the Golden Globes has always been the feeling that it potentially could go completely off the rails. The Academy Awards is nothing but Hollywood ‘A Listers’. The Golden Globes is much more egalitarian with huge stars rubbing shoulders (and other body parts) with C Listers from TV shows, supermodels and anonymous scantily clad women who are referred to as ‘socialites’. It’s hard not to appreciate the Hollywood Foreign Press Association orchestrating an event where they could hobnob with sexy women in sultry dresses lubricated by copious amounts of booze.
That’s how it has been in the past but the mood in Hollywood has become chilly lately. It started with the election of Donald Trump to which Hollywood types responded with an anguish suggesting the end of civilization itself. Since they all bankrolled Hillary Clinton this isn’t a surprise. The more significant event was the fall of serial sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein who for many years had been the most powerful man in Hollywood *and* the Democratic Party’s fundraising point man steering boatloads of cash to the past few Democratic candidates. Before his downfall, the Clintons were considered an ‘intimate friend and associate’ of Weinstein. Now they’ve completely disassociated themselves and insisted that they knew nothing about his activities.
The Academy Awards show has become almost like watching a church service with self absorbed, smug parishioners. It’s not going to get any better in the Weinstein aftermath. It’ll be interesting to see what happens now with the Golden Globes Awards. Awards shows in general have plummeted in the ratings and the Golden Globes’ party vibe was one of it’s few mitigating factors. If they start acting as straight and uptight as the Academy Awards they might not be long for this world.
Here are the odds for the television categories of the 75th Golden Globes Awards. We’ll have the film awards in a subsequent post:
75TH GOLDEN GLOBES AWARDS TELEVISION BETTING ODDS
BEST DRAMA SERIES
The Handmaid’s Tale: -175
Stranger Things: +350
Game of Thrones: +500
The Crown: +750
This is Us: +750
BEST ACTOR IN A TV DRAMA SERIES
Sterling K. Brown (This Is Us): +125
Jason Bateman (Ozark): +200
Freddie Highmore (The Good Doctor): +350
Bob Odenkirk (Better Call Saul): +700
Liev Schreiber (Ray Donovan): +700
BEST ACTRESS IN A TV DRAMA SERIES
Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid’s Tale): -225
Katherine Langford (Thirteen Reasons Why): +500
Claire Foy (The Crown): +500
Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Deuce): +750
Caitriona Balfe (Outlander): +750
BEST COMEDY SERIES
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: +150
Will and Grace: +150
Master of None: +350
SMILF: +750
Black-ish: +750
BEST ACTOR IN A TV COMEDY SERIES
Aziz Ansari (Master of None): +125
Kevin Bacon (I Love Dick): +300
Eric McCormack (Will and Grace): +300
Anthony Anderson (Black-ish): +500
William H. Macy (Shameless): +600
BEST ACTRESS IN A TV COMEDY SERIES
Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel): -125
Alison Brie (Glow): +250
Frankie Shaw (SMILF): +500
Maggie Gyllenhaal (Insecure): +700
Caitriona Balfe (Better Things): +700
BEST TV SUPPORTING ACTOR
Alexander Skarsgard (Big Little Lies): -105
David Harbour (Stranger Things): +300
Christian Slater (Mr. Robot): +300
Alfred Molina(Feud: Bette and Joan): +700
David Thewlis (Fargo): +700
BEST TV SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Laura Dern (Big Little Lies): +125
Ann Dowd (The Handmaid’s Tale): +225
Chrissy Metz (This Is Us): +300
Shailene Woodley (Big Little Lies): +700
Michelle Pfeiffer (The Wizard of Lies): +700
BEST TV MOVIE/LIMITED SERIES
Big Little Lies: -150
Feud: Bette and Joan: +300
Fargo: +450
Top of the Lake: China Girl: +750
The Sinner: +750
BEST ACTOR IN A TV MOVIE/LIMITED SERIES
Robert Di Niro (The Wizard of Lies): +225
Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks): +300
Ewan McGregor (Fargo): +350
Geoffrey Rush (Genius): +750
William H. Macy (Shameless): +750
BEST ACTRESS IN A TV MOVIE/LIMITED SERIES
Nicole Kidman (Big Little Lies): -125
Jessica Lange (Feud: Bette and Joan): +350
Jessica Biel (The Sinner): +350
Susan Sarandon(Feud: Bette and Joan): +700
Reese Witherspoon(Big Little Lies): +700