Sport is made for betting

The Academy Awards - betting bonanza or complete dross? It's probably somewhere in between. I'm not a movie expert by any stretch of the imagination. In fact I reckon I've been to more race meetings this year (once) than to the flicks in the past two yrs. But there is money to be made on these markets. In my early days working for a bookie, we would have one client ring up from the States to bet on just one thing - the Academy Awards. And this guy was red hot. Not ringing an hour before the event when there may have been a leak but a few weeks beforehand, picking off the value because he knew his stuff much better the couple of guys who much preferred football and cricket. Awards markets are tricky. You have to understand how the voting is done, historical precedents, how box office figures mean little, the types of roles and films which appeal to the judges, the other award ceremonies (Screenwriters' Guild, BAFTAs etc) which provide strong formlines, how much or how li...