Total Solar Eclipse 2017 Proposition Betting Odds

Written by Jim Murphy

–A rare total eclipse of the sun will be available to some Americans on August 21, 2017.

–Everyone in North America will see at least a partial eclipse.

–Cities in the path of totality are bracing for a massive influx of tourists.

It’s somewhat surprising what a big event the upcoming total solar eclipse has become. Sure, it’s a rare occurence–the last one in America was back in 1979–but that doesn’t explain the massive ‘eclipse hysteria’ that has grasped the general public and the media. The major network news outlets are planning to devote hours of live coverage to the eclipse. CNN is expecting a huge audience for their eclipse coverage that they’re using the opportunity to debut a new live advertising format on the network. Any media property with the flimsiest pretext to do so is going to be covering the eclipse in depth.

It’s not unusual for the media to go overboard for events like this but this appears to be one instance where the general public is along for the ride. Carbondale, Illinois is one of the main destinations for eclipse watchers and they say they’re ‘expecting over 90,000 visitors’ in the usually sleepy hamlet during the eclipse week. Even cities that aren’t in the direct ‘path of totality’ are trying to milk the eclipse for everything it’s worth. The most desperate in the media are trying to somehow tie the eclipse to President Donald Trump and suggest that it’s a harbinger of doom.

WHAT IS A SOLAR ECLIPSE?

Here’s the official NASA explanation of what a solar eclipse actually is:

This celestial event is a solar eclipse in which the moon passes between the sun and Earth and blocks all or part of the sun for up to about three hours, from beginning to end, as viewed from a given location. For this eclipse, the longest period when the moon completely blocks the sun from any given location along the path will be about two minutes and 40 seconds. The last time the contiguous U.S. saw a total eclipse was in 1979.

So basically it’ll get dark for a couple of minutes in the middle of the day which is definitely a trippy effect but not necessarily a cause of mass hysteria. People living above the Arctic Circle experience it to a much more significant degree every Winter. But America being America, there is a profound lack of realization that there’s a whole world beyond the US borders. And America being America, the ‘Total Eclipse of 2017’ is a perfect opportunity for every quick buck huckster to come out of hiding selling knock off eclipse viewing glasses and commemorative t-shirts.

To be sure, it would have been difficult to create a more marketable eclipse if someone drew it up for a Powerpoint presentation. The eclipse will cut a narrow path across the United States starting on the Oregon Coast and ending in Coastal South Carolina near Charleston. It bypasses most of the major cities in America–Nashville, Tennessee is the only approximating a significant metro area in the path of totality–which means that it won’t cause a major disruption to the economic, social and artistic creative centers. Instead, it will take a narrow route through sparsely populated Western States, the ‘flyover country’ of the Midwest and the deep South. That it provides many cities and towns that usually don’t have much going for them with a perfect marketing gimmick is just an ‘ancillary benefit’.

SETTING ODDS ON THE ECLIPSE

Here at Sports Betting Experts we just can’t let any type of major event take place without setting odds on it. If we do, it just feels like we’re not doing our jobs. With that thought in mind, I set about creating odds for the ‘Total Eclipse of 2017’. The first problem–science has long ago gotten this whole ‘movement of celestial bodies’ thing pretty well figured out. That means that even with a rare event like a total eclipse there’s very little ambiguity involved. Scientists have already figured out when it’ll begin and end as well as the duration of the eclipse from various vantage points along the route.

The second problem–there’s a lot of ancillary events ascribed to the eclipse from an influx of tourists to a surge in ‘human trafficking’ (a canard that REASON magazine debunks every year at Super Bowl time). Unfortunately, while there are countless ‘ancillary events’ that will happen because or in conjunction with the eclipse there’s little in the way of concrete data. In fact, there’s little definite information at all–a lot of ‘experts are expecting’ or ‘sources say’. That might be good enough for clickbait headlines but definitely not good enough for a betting proposition which necessitates specificity in the wording of the bet and a definitive outcome with which to grade it.

If you’ve read our stuff in the past you know I love setting odds on weather related events and that’s where we’ll start with our ‘Eclipse odds’. More specifically, I figured the odds for favorable viewing weather in various communities along the eclipse route. The enemies of eclipse viewing are obviously clouds and the precipitation they bring and so I’ve posted numbers for cloud coverage on August 21 as well as the presence of significant precipitation starting in Corvallis, Oregon and ending in Charleston, South Carolina. There’s great data available on cloud coverage and precipitation so it’s a perfect topic for oddsmaking.

Next, we found some real world events that might be influenced by the eclipse. Social media metrics–number of Tweets and Tweets per minute–are one example. After considering a variety of metrics to measure tourism numbers it became apparent that the best data available was hotel occupancy statistics. These are released on a daily, weekly and monthly basis which gives us the opportunity to measure the impact of the eclipse on the broader lodging marketplace.

It’ll be interesting to see if the projections of ‘experts’ and ‘sources’ regarding the massive interest in viewing the eclipse turn out to be correct. My gut instinct is that while viewing interest and resulting tourism will be strong it won’t quite live up to the ‘biggest event of our lifetime’ hype that we’re hearing from some sources. At any rate, it’s definitely a unique and highly unusual event to witness–and to set betting odds on.