Entertainment Betting–BBC Sports Personality of the Year Odds
The BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award is a big deal in England and dates back to 1954. It was the brainchild of Paul Fox, who was the editor of the BBC sports magazine show Sportsview. Fox’s primary motivation was to plug the show and that’s why nominations were originally limited to athletes that had been featured on the Sportsview programme. Sportsview had a long shelf life and lasted until 1997 in several incarnations with eight different on-air hosts. Ironically, the award that Fox had schemed up to plug his show became far more significant and long outlived the Sportsview TV show.
The winner is determined by a public vote–originally done by postcard, now done primarily online–from a predetermined shortlist of nominees. After the proviso that candidates had to have been featured on Sportsview was eliminated the process became much more open. A panel of thirty sports journalists each submitted a list of ten names. Based on their responses, a shortlist of ten nominees was chosen. That changed in 2012–the panel had the temerity to submit an all-male list of nominees in 2011. Rather than considering that there were no females worthy of inclusion in a loaded field that included golfers Rory McElroy, Darren Clarke and Luke Donald, boxer Amir Khan and a tennis player you may have heard of named ‘Andy Murray’ the victim card was played by the British Olympic Association (BOA) on behalf of women athletes. BOA chief executive Andy Hunt noted that among the ‘household names’ omitted from the list were swimmers Keri-Anne Payne and Rebecca Adlington, rower Katherine Grainger, and England women’s cricket captain, Charlotte Edwards.
THE NOMINATION PROCESS AND DETERMINING THE WINNER
The BBC staved off an insurrection by saying they would ‘review’ the nomination procedure for the 2012 awards. Starting in 2012, the 10 nominee shortlist was determined by an ‘expert panel’. The goal of the panel is to come up with nominees that ‘reflects UK sporting achievements on the national and/or international stage, represents the breadth and depth of UK sports and takes into account impact within and beyond the sport or sporting achievement in question.’ That last bit about ‘impact’ gives them the cover they need to submit a ‘politically correct’ list of nominees in which all groups of ‘perpetual victims’ are placated in lieu of legitimate athletic achievement.
The list of nominees is still in the works so there’s a wide field of betting interests to choose from. This year could be interesting for several reasons. First of all, Andy Murray is the defending winner and current betting favorite at +175. He’s already won twice and a third victory would give him the most ever. Does the BBC ‘powers that be’ want to elevate him over other two time winners–boxer Sir Henry Cooper and Formula One drivers Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill? That’s tough. A legendary boxer and a pair of F1 World Champions. Another thing to consider–since the awards are now clearly in the age of ‘political correctness’ the timing is right for another female winner. There have been 62 recipients of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award given to 49 men and 13 women. If you’re wondering why there have been 62 recipients in 61 years there’s a reasonable answer–ice skating duo Torvill and Dean won jointly in 1984. The last female winner was Zara Phillips in 2006–she was a champion in the equestrian sport of ‘eventing‘. Incidentially, she’s only the second eventing participant to win the award, the first being Princess Anne. Oh by the way, Princess Anne is her mother. She’s the only child of the Princess and her first husband, Captain Mark Phillips. You can do the math here.
The last paragraph brings us to another important consideration–there’s not a lot of transparency about the voting process and it’s very easy to ‘work’ online polls to make them say whatever you want. If you want to do it the easy way, you can just make up the numbers. Nominally, the public gets to choose the winner but there’s much to suggest that the the result might be ‘in the tank’ and predetermined regardless of the voting. There hasn’t been a woman winner since 2006 and, more significantly, since 2012 when the nomination process was changed to make it more ‘inclusive’. Now let’s put all of the variables together: assuming they don’t want to give Murray his third (tacitly suggesting he’s the greatest UK athlete in history) it might be a good year to have another female winner. The public may not play along so the outcome could be ‘manipulated’ by the BBC or other entities. Keep that in mind when looking at these numbers and after the list of nominees is released. Winners will be announced on December 18:
BBC SPORTS PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR
Gender of BBC Sports Personality of the Year Winner
Male: -2500
Female: +1750
BBC Sports Personality of the Year Outright Winner
Andy Murray: +175
Alistair Brownlee: +275
Anthony Joshua: +400
Mo Farah: +600
Laura Trott: +800
Gareth Bale: +1400
Nick Skelton: +2000
Max Whitlock: +2500
Jason Kenny: +2300
Jessica Ennis-Hill: +5000
Lewis Hamilton: +6600
Jamie Vardy: +6600
Check back next week–we’ll be adding odds on the BBC’s ‘Team of the Year’, odds for a Top 3 finish plus more odds and bigger longshots for the outright winner!