Wager on your Oscar favorites online

Think Brokeback Mountain is a shoo-in for Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards? You can put your money where your mouth is, at a variety of online gambling sites that offer odds on the Oscars.

Online sports betting is already a huge industry, and it's expanding as sports bookies begin to offer more entertainment-based wagers. One such betting site is PlayersOnly.com.

"More and more people are coming to us specifically to bet on entertainment props (propositions)," said Tim Williams, brand manager for PlayersOnly. "It's not just sports bettors anymore."

Williams said that oftentimes, a user will come to the site specifically to bet on one entertainment event like an awards show or a reality show, and begin to bet regularly as more entertainment events pop up.

"We keep a steady stream of these events coming," Williams said. "You can lead one event into others and draw it out."

He noted that due to the seasonal cycles of reality television and regular schedules of award shows, entertainment props are perfect for a user who wants to make a bet every now and then, as compared to sports like baseball and basketball where there are games almost every day.

While you can find many expert sports betters on betting Web sites, entertainment event betters tend to be more whimsical, Williams said.

"We find that people tend to bet more with their heart," he said. Additionally, he noted, users are often tempted to put money on long shot nominees with a high potential payoff.

In the Academy Awards' Best Actor category, Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance in "Capote" is heavily favored on PlayersOnly at 1-6 odds.

"With Hoffman, the odds of winning are much higher, but you're going to have to bet $600 for every $100 you win," Williams said. "On the other hand, Heath Ledger is paying 6-1 odds," meaning that if he won, bettors would collect six times their initial wager.

Odds on entertainment events tend to be heavier for both favorites and underdogs, because upsets are less likely to occur in awards shows than sporting events.

"There's less of a degree of luck in something like the Academy Awards than, say, a basketball game," Williams said. "There are a lot of other things that can't be handicapped (in a basketball game)."

Williams said that one potential problem with running bets on things like reality TV shows is the chance that leaked information could lead to insider betting.

"If we are getting a huge amount of money on one contestant on a reality show, especially if it's all coming from one geographic region, we take note," Williams said.

He added that in the past, PlayersOnly has had to close wagering on reality TV wagers "due to what our risk managers viewed as highly suspicious betting activity."

When the prop was removed from the site, all previously placed wagers on the event were refunded, he said.

Williams said that PlayersOnly tries to offer different things to users to spice up the site.

"We try to mix it up and make it creative," he said. "We believe we're in the entertainment business."

Copyright 2006 by United Press International