No longer is sports betting limited to, well, sports. These days, sportsbooks offer betting on just about anything and everything under the sun. You can bet on the outcome of Chess matches, reality tv shows, the 2008 presidential election, and whether or not the US will launch a preemtive strike against Iran, among other things.
One of the more popular propositions now being offered by many sportsbooks, is Box Office Betting. The sportsbook will list odds on the 5 or 6 movies opening up on any given weekend, and offer you the opportunity to wager on how much they make at the box office over the weekend.
For example, here are the Box Office Betting odds for the movie CLICK for the upcoming weekend :
OVER 40.5 MILLION -150
UNDER 40.5 MILLION +134
So how do you go about handicapping and researching these propositions? Well, there are many ways to tackle this. In this article, we’ll point out a couple of websites that are quite helpful and point out some handicapping tools.
One simple method of trying to predict box office results, is to try and find a similar movie to the one you are trying to predict, and see how it did on it’s opening weekend. For example, let’s say that there was a new mob movie coming out this week, and that it had all the makings of a potential blockbuster. It’s been advertised heavily and there seems to be a buzz about the movie. So, your task would be to find a similar movie from the past, and see how it did on it’s opening weekend. So which movie would you pick? I’d pick Goodfellas. Probably the most successful mob movie over the last 15 years.
So, a quick search on google tells me that Goodfellas did 63 million on it’s opening weekend. Ah, but there’s a little problem with this method. Goodfellas opening weekend was in 1990!! It’s no 2006! How do we account for iNFLation and convert that 63 million into 2006 dollars?
That’s where are first helpful website for box office betting comes in.
Have a look around this site and you’ll find a varaity of helpful tools to help in your efforts predicting box office results. For Our example above, Leesmovieinfo has a very handy tool for converting dollars from years ago into 2006 dollars. In the Goodfellas example, 63 million in 1990 is equivalent to about 98 million in 2006. So, you’d take a look at the odds being offered, and bet accordingly. Of course you’ll want to do more than just use the method above. As mentioned, have a look around the leesmovieinfo site and you’ll find many more ideas and methods to help with your predictions and hopefully help you produce winning box office bets!
Another very helpful site in analyzing box office opening weekends, is http://www.boxofficemojo.com
Have a look around boxoofficemojo. You’ll find predictions as well as tons of other info to help with your predictions, such as the number of theaters a movie will be playing in on it’s opening weekend.